Nashville and Athens top rankings of best college towns in the SEC

The SEC is known for having great football traditions and in almost every SEC town there's a tremendous experience to be had on a college football game day. Have you ever wondered what are the best SEC towns to visit overall?

Well, Athlon Sports wanted to know just that,and asked 12 prominent media members that cover the SEC to ran the 14 towns and cities in the SEC. Here is the list they came up with:

1. Nashville, TN (Vanderbilt)

2. Athens, GA (Georgia)

3. Oxford, MS (Ole Miss)

4. Knoxville, TN (Tennessee)

5. Baton Rouge, LA (LSU)

6. Tuscaloosa, AL (Alabama)

7. Auburn, AL (Auburn)

8. Columbia, MO (Missouri)

9. Lexington, KY (Kentucky)

10. College Station, TX (Texas A&M)

11. Gainesville, FL (Florida)

12. Fayetteville, AR (Arkansas)

13. Columbia, SC (South Carolina)

14. Starkville, MS (Mississippi State)

You can check out the full list of voters and explanations for each of the selections here.

There will be plenty of argument over the top of the list, but those three top cities are great places to be. If this was a list of places to go on game day, Nashville would be much, much lower — probably at the very bottom — but it's hard to argue against Nashville just as a city to visit. At the same time,  it doesn't really count as a college town as much as it's a city that Vanderbilt happens to be in. Athens is great and I've only been to Oxford once, but from the parts I can actually remember it was a lot of fun.

There are a lot of great cities and towns in the SEC, and I'm sure fans of each team will want their city to be higher, but there's not much here that has me personally upset — I went to Starkville last year and enjoyed it for the two days I was there for the Auburn game, but there really isn't anything to do there.