Like other Southeastern Conference graduates living in a city without big-time college football, Gordon Voight found that most New Yorkers failed to comprehend his consuming devotion to his alma mater.

"The people in New York City had no clue," he learned after moving to the city in 1993. "They didn't even have an idea what it means to be from an SEC school. They had no idea what Saturdays were like."

While the city lacks a native college-football culture, Mr. Voight suspected he could find other frustrated transplants. He needed friends who knew exactly what game days mean to a fan of the Arkansas Razorbacks.

Before the kickoff of the 1998 football season, he put out a call for die-hard fans of SEC schools to meet at a restaurant. "I had no idea who'd show up," Mr. Voight said of that first meeting, which was assembled entirely on word of mouth.

Fifteen years later, his informal college-football support group draws hundreds of SEC fanatics to what has become an annual preseason tradition for wayward Southerners in the five boroughs.