Knoxville, Tenn. - Jeb Bush's Great SEC Selfie Tour continued Saturday in Knoxville, where he delivered the briefest of stump speeches before signing off with a promise.
"I look forward to taking as many selfies as I humanly can," he said.
And with that, the former Florida governor plunged into a crowd of a few hundred mostly orange-and-white clad football fans outside Neyland Stadium.
Tailgating and selfie-scrums have fast become a central tenet of the Republican's presidential strategy. This is
his second of four trips this football season for tailgates deep in SEC country.
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Most of the crowded Republican field of candidates have stumped at college football games this fall. But no one has embraced it quite like Bush, who also released the above video about his love for the SEC.
The former Florida governor and his SEC-inspired logo advertised the visit before the Georgia-Tennessee game as a selfie-riddled showcase for "a successful conservative governor from an SEC state."
He has already tailgated at the University of Georgia's North Campus before the home team's 52-20 thrashing of South Carolina in September, wading through more than an hour of selfies with students and fans before and after his brief campaign speech.
And he plans to visit Tuscaloosa to take in Alabama's game against LSU on Nov. 7 as well as the Nov. 28 rivalry grudge match between Mississippi State and Ole Miss in Starkville.
The visits play into the kickoff off the SEC primary, the regional March 1 bloc of southern states spearheaded by Georgia. Most polls show Bush trailing Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, who is in Atlanta Saturday, and other outsider candidates. But Bush's campaign hopes to make a stand in the South.
Indeed, on Saturday Bush promised to return to the South throughout his campaign.
"You ready for a victory?" he said to cheers as Tennessee's "Rocky Top" anthem faded in the background. "I was talking about 2016 and today," he quickly added.
We should note that Bush's in-state rival, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, released a remarkably similar video back in September. In that spot, Rubio was peppered with NFL and college football questions while tossing the pigskin:
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