In a month’s time, SEC scribes and talking heads will invade Tampa to debate the merits of the league’s football programs.
The Big Ten has all the hardware form the last three falls, and the Big Bad SEC’s strangle hold on the sport has been pried loose. The same can’t be said for baseball. Oklahoma became the fifth different SEC national title winner in six years on Monday night.
The Sooners finished in 11th place after 30 conference games and bowed out of the SEC Tournament meekly against a 9-21 LSU squad that had 24 hours left in its dismal season.
For perspective, the 11th place finishers in SEC football last fall were Florida and Kentucky. Those athletic departments paid Billy Napier and Mark Stoops $59.4 million to leave the premises immediately.
Skip Johnson will get a statue.
Eleventh in the SEC’s basketball standings got Oklahoma an invitation to something called College Basketball Crown which is somewhere below the NIT and above a Wednesday night Oklahoma City church league.
Auburn also tied for 11th and accepted a bid to the NIT where they won five straight games to be crowned the 69th best team in the sport.
In college baseball, eleventh was good enough to win the national title.
This Oklahoma team was great for five weeks. The Sooners opened the season in Arlington by smashing Texas Tech, Oklahoma State and TCU by combined score of 32-6. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the Big 12. If you were curious who finished 11th in that league, it was Kansas State which went 11-19 in league play, lost nine straight games at one point, won three of 10 Big 12 weekends and finished under .500 at home.
Then Oklahoma was great for the four weeks of the NCAA Tournament. And that’s what matters in college baseball. The Southeastern Conference has separated from the rest of the pack in a significant way.
Those 30 games over 10 weeks are truly, truly a grind unless Missouri shows up for the weekend. Everyone gets popped a time or two. In Oklahoma’s case, they lost six of 10 weekends, were swept at Texas and dropped the final four series of the year.
College baseball allows for that in a way that college football doesn’t and college basketball often doesn’t. Is that as equitable way to determine a champion? Probably not. It’s still infinitely intriguing to me.
The Oklahoma team that showed up at Alex Box Stadium in March started Cam Johnson in Game 1. He appeared in one postseason game, and he failed to record an out against Georgia Tech. LJ Mercurius was the ace early on. He became a bullpen bullet as three freshmen took the rotation reins.
Flawed teams are allowed to evolve in college baseball, and sometimes it takes 57 games for that to happen. This team evolved into a brute of a machine that outscored Kansas 21-3 in the Lawrence Super Regional and Alabama and Georgia 24-7 over three games to win the All-SEC bracket in Omaha. Barry Switzer and Bob Stoops must have been proud of those scores looking on from the suites above Charles Schwab Field.
In a season where LSU, Arkansas and Tennessee were a tick down, the league still put five teams in the College World Series and took home the title.
July’s SEC Media Days conversations will attempt to properly place the SEC in college football’s landscape. No such discourse is necessary around baseball.
Next spring the 16 teams will bludgeon each other for another 10 weeks, and then another SEC-heavy Omaha bracket will settle on a champion.
I have a hunch another title will head back to the southeast.
