PALMER: SEC hits home run with new tournament format
05/26/2025
(Photo by LSU Athletics)
By Hunt Palmer
Damn near everything the Southeastern Conference touches turns to gold.
So, why wouldn’t the new baseball tournament format work out beautifully?
Over the last 30 years, the format has gone from eight teams in straight double elimination to a hybrid 12-team-single-to-double-back-to-single-elimination to this year’s straight single-elimination version including all 16 teams.
At its core, the tournament is a cash grab. It’s a fun one. I love good baseball at 9:30 in the morning and midnight, but it’s a cash grab. The winner never needs the automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament.
However, each team’s goal upon arrival in Hoover is different.
This week Kentucky showed up squarely on the at-large bubble. Ole Miss and Tennessee were eyeing hosting rights for this week. Auburn and LSU wanted to make sure a top eight seed was sewn up. Texas and Vanderbilt didn’t need a thing.
Texas got nothing, and Vanderbilt won the whole thing. Neither was especially consequential unless you value the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.
In the end, every team (excluding South Carolina and Missouri and their combined 9-51 record) but Texas A&M and Alabama got what it needed out of the week. The Aggies needed to win the tournament, and they were a swing away from reaching Saturday. Alabama was a potential host, but their loss to the Tennessee left them out despite a high RPI.
The Rebels and Volunteers used wins to earn hosting bids. Auburn, LSU, Texas and Arkansas weren’t dinged for losses. They’re top eight seeds. Kentucky still got into the field despite a Tuesday loss. Florida and Oklahoma were comfortable No. 2 seeds on Tuesday and finished there on Memorial Day. Mississippi State was safely into the field as well. Their loss to Texas A&M didn’t matter.
All of that, and no one had to bring pitchers back on short rest or play at 1:45 in the morning because of afternoon rain. That tends to show up in bunches on the Gulf Coast this time of year, you know.
Rain came once on Tuesday. No big deal. There was plenty of time for makeup games on Thursday and Friday with only two games initially scheduled for those days.
For the top four seeds, the ones annually poised to compete for a national title and have enough resume hay in the barn before arriving in Hoover, they’re asked to play no more than three games. For the teams looking to improve resumes as at-large teams or potential hosts, they get a little more runway but don’t have to fear multiple losses that could drop an RPI eight spots in two days.
This was always going to make sense from a baseball perspective. All of that was clear before a pitch was thrown at the Hoover Met.
What we couldn’t know for sure is how attendance would be hurt because fans of specific teams were only guaranteed three hours of baseball. I wasn’t in Hoover, but I got a text from someone who was on Friday.
“This place has been bonkers,” it read.
That was the last question to be answered, and it was answered emphatically.
The idea for this format won’t rival Roy Kramer inventing the SEC Championship Game while folks looked at him sideways for creating a ton of risk for title contenders. It’s not Mike Slive spearheading the SEC Network. It’s not Greg Sankey pillaging the Big 12 for Texas and Oklahoma.
It’s not even the hiring of Mike Tranghese to kick-start a stalled basketball conference. By the way, the league now owns that sport, too.
But inviting all 16 teams was the best course of action, and this week was proof that it’s perfectly formatted now. Now 13 league members will try to maneuver the road to Omaha.
Just a hunch, but I bet the field in three weeks will share a striking resemblance to what we watched in Hoover over six days.
At Charles Schwab Field, it will actually just mean more.