The SEC has proven over and over that it has the country's best football teams. And according to a recent study, the conference's domination may spill over from the field to the stands.

Research done by Discover Card and the pollsters at Rasmussen Reports found that SEC fans are the most loyal to their teams. Discover used four factors to judge fan loyalty, and SEC fans came in first in each one

-- How important it is for them to watch their favorite team play each week.
-- How closely they follow their teams.
-- How much they wear their school's colors.
-- How well family and friends know who their favorite team is.

The study also ranked the top five most loyal fan bases in the country, with an SEC school finishing atop the list.

But it may not be the one you would have initially guessed. It was not the fans of two-time defending national champion Alabama, or even Florida or Georgia. No, the study found that the most loyal supporters in the country were Auburn fans.

Interestingly, of the five schools with the most loyal fan bases, Auburn was the only SEC institution. Three of the five were from the Big Ten (Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin) while the final school is in the Big 12 (West Virginia).

(H/T to Barstool Sports)

Like so many other veterans when they return home, Nathan Noble had some trouble adjusting to life in the United States. After serving two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, Noble was a new man when he returned stateside five years ago.

"He'd been doing something he felt so strongly about that was every day absolutely a matter of life and death," Nathan's mother, Beth, recently told the Louisville Courier-Journal. "Then you come home and nobody really relates to you. They expect you to be the same 18-year-old that left."

Now 28, Noble joined the Marines after graduating from high school about 10 years ago. In April 2003 he was deployed to Iraq, and eight months later he was deployed to Afghanistan. That tour lasted two years, and before long he returned to Iraq, where he was stationed in a dangerous part of Baghdad. Firefights and roadside bombs were common.

"We’d joke about things like getting shot, because that’s how we coped," Noble told the Louisville Courier-Journal. "But in the back of our minds it was very much a reality that, 'Hey, I might never see you again when you get blown up five minutes from now.'"

When Noble returned from Iraq, it took a while to adapt to civilian life. A skilled soccer player in high school, Noble helped a friend coach a middle school team and then eventually scored a gig as an assistant men's coach at Georgetown College in Georgetown, Ky.

Noble, who had spent some time kicking a football during a brief stay in Uzbekistan, worked out with the Georgetown football team and routinely nailed 50-yard field goals. He discussed the possibility of walking on, but because Georgetown is a private school, the GI Bill would not cover the entire cost of tuition.

So Noble has gone back to training several days a week, hoping to play somewhere next year. He enrolled in classes at Kentucky in 2009, and since the NCAA allows students a five-year window to play intercollegiate athletics, Noble only has one year of eligibility left.

"I just hope I get a shot," Noble told WDRB in Louisville. "Whatever comes of that, I'll do whatever the team asks me or the team needs me to do."

For Noble's entire story, see here.

(H/T to Hot Clicks)

ThePostGame recently caught up with the 1984 Heisman Trophy winner. Flutie is currently working as a college football analyst for NBC Sports and touring on behalf of the Capital One Cup, an NCAA Division I athletic award given annually to the top men's and women's college athletics program.

ThePostGame: Is there any particular bowl matchup that you're looking forward to?
DOUG FLUTIE: I think, for me, obviously the national championship game. But I love watching Johnny Manziel play, so the Texas A&M-Oklahoma game should be a lot of fun. The fact that they're playing at the Cotton Bowl, it's Texas A&M and Oklahoma, it's a throwback to what the old Cotton Bowl was back in the days of the Southwest Conference. That's going to be fun for me to keep an eye on.

TPG: It seems like there are a couple of teams in the Capital One Cup standings that can make some noise in bowl season. Wisconsin, Stanford, Florida State are all in the top 10. Do you see any big shakeups coming?
FLUTIE: The national championship for both levels, FCS and FBS, is 60 points. The national championship game is going to pull a lot of weight. The gaining of the 60 points and the emphasis on championships in general is huge, especially for football.

Florida in the past has been dominant across the board in their program. They're the defending champions, until they’re unseated, every Florida win is huge. And they're playing in the Sugar Bowl.

TPG: You've got to be happy to see a Boston College alum leading one of the best teams in the NFL. It seems like with so many top tier teams in the league he doesn't get as much attention as some of the other guys. When you watch Matt Ryan play, what stands out to you about him?
FLUTIE: No. 1 he’s a classy kid. Since his Boston College days he's done everything the right way. When he went to Atlanta, he was exactly what they needed after the whole Michael Vick thing. So whether he was successful on the field or not, he was the right guy.

And now, with the way things have gone for him and the way he plays. He's a traditional quarterback, he's standing in there, throwing the football, taking his reads. I'll put him in with the elite. He's going to be looked back at as a Peyton Manning or a Tom Brady before he's through.

And it's good to see that they can carry the torch for the guys who can still stand in there and throw. [It's like], "Hey, this is the way this game is played, people. Not this running around stuff that all you athletic guys like to do." I've admired him since his BC days. His rookie year he made throws and did some things ... right away you knew he was going to be successful.

I'm very happy for him. I think he's just gonna have a phenomenal career. He's going to get himself a Super Bowl ring at some point, hopefully it's this year.

TPG: You've done a lot of work on concussion awareness. How far do you think the NFL has come in the last five years, and how much progress is there to be made?
FLUTIE: There's a lot of room for progress for sure. I don't know how much progress has actually been made. I know that the helmets have been restructured. Something about a lighter helmet scares me, and these ones that look like motorcycle racecar helmets pop off all the time. But I don't know.

They are putting money towards it, and I don't know whether it's legitimate or whether it's to appease the lawsuits and everything else. The fact that they pull players out but then you get guys that have concussions and hide it from the team so they can play the next week, and the team says "We're going to clear a guy" when it used to be an eight-day rule where you have to sit a game out. So I don't know how much progress has been made, I know there's a lot more attention being given to it.

I don’t know that there's a lot you can do about concussions, other than sit people out and not let them play.

TPG: We couldn’t let you go without asking about your band, Flutie Brothers Band. Are you guys still jamming, or are you on break?
FLUTIE: Usually during the fall we're on break, we don't do a lot throughout this time of year. Usually we do some stuff at the Super Bowl and then in the spring we do a lot of playing. We still get together and we're getting ready to start booking dates again in January.

It's just a fun release. We all have a blast doing it -- you don't get beat up and you don't lose.

It's the ultimate poker game. When do you hold back, save your best effort for when it really matters, and take your opponent by surprise.

Maybe you hold back bad news from your employees until it's time to tell them the company is eliminating their division, so they don't steal every last office supply and file.

Maybe you show restraint when your girlfriend asks you if the jeans she's wearing make her look fat. Probably better not to use the word "huge."

Stanford beat UCLA 35-17 Saturday evening at the Rose Bowl, but did the Bruins hold something back in the Pac-12 regular season finale, knowing if they lose they'd gain a rematch with the Cardinal on Friday for the right to go to the Rose Bowl anyway?

And, if UCLA were to have won, the Bruins would instead have had to play former No. 1 Oregon in Eugene, thought to be a tougher roadie. After all, the ultimate goal is the Rose Bowl, the only shot at a BCS game for UCLA.

"We are competitors and those guys in there don't spend all that time preparing for a game, with the sacrifices they make, to not try their best every opportunity they get," said UCLA head coach Jim Mora in the bowel of the Rose Bowl after the game. "To insinuate that our players didn't give their best effort -- I've never."

Mora continued to deny he'd even remotely consider holding anything back for Friday's bigger game.

"If we're holding something back, we wouldn't have had our starters in there at the end," he said. "I wouldn't have used timeouts with 6:30 left in the game. We are trying to create a culture about winning. The only way to win is you go for it every time you step on the field. If you don't do that, then you cheat everybody, your alumni, your fans, your students."

One reporter practically laughed at Mora, insinuating he wasn't being honest, suggesting that Mora had plenty of practice holding back while coaching NFL preseason games.

Home-and-home matchups happen in basketball, hockey, and occasionally bar fights, but you don't see college football teams playing each other twice within six days. Stanford had to win. UCLA has to win next Friday. So the motivation was clearly different.

I walked off the field with Stanford head man David Shaw. He told me he's known the Mora family for years, and it's just not in his makeup to hold back. But what about his players?

UCLA star linebacker Anthony Barr admitted there might have been something missing. "The energy and the demeanor wasn't as upbeat as it had been in the past, say for example, last week (against USC). We pride ourselves on our energy and our enthusiasm, and it wasn't fully there today. I know we'll get it back."

Barr made it clear to me that he didn't think anyone was intentionally holding anything back, but all you had to do was watch the action. It's human nature. You can blame the Pac-12 money grab, creating a championship game that it did well without for decades.

Now, the tables are turned. Obviously there's no way either team holds anything back Friday, but Shaw has some work to do this week. Because Stanford won so handily, he has to convince his players they've got a real battle on their hands, whether UCLA was all in or not. In other words, don't hold back on fire on passion. Here's our conversation:

Shaw: "(The Bruins) are going to come up to Stanford, California and they're going to give us their best shot, and we better be ready for it."

Me: "Do you think your players are really going to believe that, when they just absolutely kicked UCLA's butts all over the field?

Shaw: "They better."

Me: "Kids are kids. You beat the crap out of somebody on the playground, it's hard to tell them that at the next recess that kid's going to beat the crap out of you. How do you really sell it?

Shaw: "These are Stanford kids. Smart kids. They understand that we can't approach a game any differently than we approached it the week before."

Translation: Just because the other kid left with a bloody nose, don't hold back.

I don't believe Coach Mora held anything back -- nor did his coaching staff. Whether the kids did or not will be determined this coming Friday in Palo Alto.

Photo Credits: AP