OK, why not?

It’s still a couple of weeks before live warfare in college football and anything is still up for debate.

So I’ll take a stab. Let’s rate the SEC outposts as the best college towns. It could be fun.

First of all, Baton Rouge, Knoxville, Lexington, Columbia, S.C., and especially Nashville, you can all go have a seat.

All are fine cities, but that’s just the point — they’re cities, not college towns.

All except Nashville (Vanderbilt) may be dominated on the sports front by their local schools and, to a lesser degree, also the cultural delights.

And on football weekends there’s seems to be little else going on, no matter how far from campus the traffic jam takes you.

But it’s not like that 24/7.

When ranking college towns, at some point you have to use the adjective “quaint,” and it would be a stretch for any of those places. Don’t take it personally.

Also, Columbia, Mo., sorry but you’re also excused from this. From all I’ve heard it might rank pretty high. But I have never set foot in the place even though rumors have persisted for a few years now that it is in the SEC. LSU wouldn’t know it.

It gave the SEC another Columbia and more depth at Tigers, neither of which was a crying need.

I know at least one sportswriter who made his own flight arrangements to get there, made the customary SEC plane change in Atlanta, and ended up at the Columbia in South Carolina.

But anyway, that still leaves eight bona fide college towns.

So let’s dive in, worst to first.

8. Starkville (Mississippi State): Big surprise here, huh? No need to pile on. At least the place has come to grips with its destiny. And a lot of good people are here. The whole “Stark-Vegas” marketing ploy was well conceived in a friendly sort of we-are-what-we-are sort of way. But, with classic early American cinder block architecture and the fast-food nightmare strip, it remains, at heart, Stark-patch. Also Skip Bertman’s favorite punch line.

7. College Station (Texas A&M): Probably should get a better ranking. It’s great on Game Day, certainly one of the friendliest tailgating atmosphere’s you’ll find. And it seems to have undergone a radical transformation since LSU’s pre-SEC visits there in the 1980s when the whole military obsession seemed a little creepy and almost scary. Now it’s more harmless, innocent patriotism. Great. The problem is, I’m not sure what it would have to offer when it’s not game day or football season.

6. Gainesville (Florida): Always turns up on those “Best Cities to Live in” lists. But those people aren’t trying to score a hotel room on football weekends. Beyond that, the whole tailgate atmosphere seems somewhat aloof. But give Gainesville credit. Somehow over the last 10 years or so they’ve solved pregame traffic jams and should share their secrets. But shouldn’t a true “college town” have total gridlock on game days?

5. Fayetteville (Arkansas): The whole 30-mile or so stretch of the booming Walmart Metroplex would be in danger of joining those at the big city table. But Fayetteville itself remains quaint, sitting at the southern half of it and seemingly resisting all temptations to join the creeping fast-food, chain-hotel nuttiness. It remains a college town, with a great strip just off campus where you can find cold beer, great barbecue and maybe the best steak in the SEC at Doe’s Eat Place.

4. Tuscaloosa (Alabama): Yes, you have to deal with Tide fans and, yes, they can be insufferable. And one day Tuscaloosa may become just another suburb of Birmingham. But it’s a good layout for a football weekend. There’s something totally college town about walking to the stadium with frat houses on one side and the somewhat grimy campus strip on the other, both right by Bryant-Denny. And make sure to go down Jug Factory Road ­— the best named road in the South — to eat at Dreamland, a shack with the best barbecue in the SEC.

3. Auburn (War Eagle): Now, this is a pure college town, even if you’re not into throwing toilet paper over oak trees on Toomer’s Corner. The famous lemonade at Toomer’s drug store is just lemonade. But no little town in the SEC embraces the history of its focal point — football — like Auburn. You can’t walk anywhere in the “downtown” area around campus with tripping over a sidewalk plaque of Bo Jackson or some flag to Shug Jordan or Pat Dye.

2. Oxford (Ole Miss): Would be No. 1 in any other conference. Just gorgeous, with very few hints of the 21st century. Overrated: The Grove, which gets all the tailgating attention but almost seems to be outgrowing its purpose. Underrated: The Square, for my money the best spot in the SEC. It looks like every Southern small-town courthouse square you ever saw in the movies, yet with great places to eat and drink surrounding it. A good little walk from campus, but worth it.

1. Athens (Georgia): Somehow keeps its small-town look and feel even with more to do and more going on than cities 10 times its size. The off-campus bar scene is massive but keeps the proper rustic and jumbled look that apparently wasn’t planned but just sort of happened over the years. Besides, UGA, the SEC’s most debonair mascot, lives here.

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at shobbs@americanpress.comBest College Towns graphicAmerican Press