Well, it's a cult, so I don't think we really have an explanation...
Oh, I kid, as always. I'll pipe up as a cob-lover, even though I'm a two-timin' briar lover as well. They just smoke great for some reason; cool, dry, they stay lit better, even with sloppy packing, you could use one for a snorkel and it still wouldn't gurgle, the wide-open draft smokes really well for me, you can "forget" to clean them for a while and they don't get skunky. The stock stems suck, but the plug-and-play Danish upgrade stems only cost fifty cents. The only tobacco they don't enhance the flavor of is Latakia, and there's probably even some people who like that anyway. I'm probably forgetting about a dozen other reasons, but someone else will be along to enumerate them. There will be naysayers, but they're not in the cult, so what do they know?