The Wild World of SEC Baseball

The Wild World of SEC Baseball

5/15/2006

By Rod Williamson

The Southeastern Conference has always been a dog-eat-dog affair in each of its varsity sports but if there is anything more competitive than baseball we need to get the women and children off the streets. If you look up parity in the dictionary you will see a picture of the SEC baseball standings.

This spring’s pennant race resembles a cavalry charge as we enter the last weekend of the regular season. Kentucky, which hasn’t won the SEC baseball title in 30 years, is the unlikely front-runner but once you get beyond the Wildcats you could throw a napkin over the next eight or nine teams.  Talk about the ability to win on any given day!

In some sports — such as football — the rich seem to get richer. But take a peek at the bottom dwellers in the current hardball standings.  Florida and Auburn, perennial powers on the diamond, are the only two schools eliminated.  The Gators were second at last year’s College World Series and figured to be a big player again. LSU, perhaps the NCAA’s dominant team in the ’90’s, has taken its lumps.

Toss in bubble teams Mississippi State, coached by the legendary Ron Polk, and Tennessee, another CWS team of 2005, and you have just named the top contenders to be locked out of the SEC Tournament next week.  Granted, several are mathematically alive but if they were hospital patients they would be listed in critical condition.

What’s up in this league anyway? I’ll offer one view from the bleacher seats. The SEC has had an influx of great coaches with even greater work ethics. Our Tim Corbin is a prototype, bringing in the nation’s top-ranked freshman class this year. Kentucky added John Cohen three years ago off the Florida staff, not a bad hire as they say. There are people who think Dave Van Horn of Arkansas is the best coach in the league. You get the idea.

Many schools built beautiful new stadiums, boosted team budgets and generally began to take the national pastime more seriously. The result is that those schools with aging facilities living off the fickle term “tradition” have not only been caught, they appear to have been passed by the league’s young jackals.

As most of the readers of this column doubtless know by now, Vanderbilt will try to be the host site of one of the NCAA Regional tournaments.  Recent history says that all eight teams making the SEC Tournament field have gotten NCAA bids and recently even a ninth team has made the grade.

Fan support and tournament interest is a part of the selection criteria. Season ticket holders received a letter about two weeks ago inviting them to pre-order tickets. At the moment we have taken orders for several hundred tickets and after the sterling play in the LSU series victory we expect to take more this week. Additionally, six hundred tickets must be earmarked for the three visiting teams (200 each) so there aren’t as many open seats as it might appear.

If you want to be helpful, why not order your tickets this week?  Doing so will help us make the most aggressive bid possible as we can better gauge the potential interest in this marquee event in early June.

Should we not make the field, or not become a host, we will not process any orders. Give the ticket office a call today for more information — 615-322-GOLD.