If the results so far in the NCAA baseball tournament prove anything, it's that too many SEC teams made it in and not enough from the American Athletic and other conferences.
Of the 13 SEC teams in the tournament, only Arkansas and Auburn have advanced to the Super Regionals. We’ll get to that in a minute, but first let’s look at how regular-season champion UTSA went to Austin and stunned mighty Texas.
Twice. Actually three times, if you want to count the Roadrunners' 8-7 regular-season win over the Longhorns.
UTSA spotted Texas a five-run lead on Sunday, then roared back to win 9-7. That eliminated the Longhorns, who were the No. 2 overall seed in the tournament.
The national pundits sounded surprised, but anyone who paid attention to the AAC this season knew the Roadrunners were capable.
They finished 23-4 in conference play, including a three-game sweep of USF. They received an at-large bid after losing in the AAC tournament, one of only two teams from the conference to make the field.
East Carolina, which won the conference tournament, was the other.
Ask the mighty Florida Gators how they feel about those AAC ruffians. East Carolina dealt the Gators both of their losses in the regional, and let’s not forget that USF went to Gainesville and put a 7-1 smackdown on them.
Add it up: The AAC is 4-0 against the SEC in the tournament.
The Pirates were eliminated Sunday by 8th-ranked Coastal Carolina in a 1-0 nailbiter.
They were joined on the sidelines by Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi State, and – wait for it – No. 1 overall seed Vanderbilt. The Commodores lost to Wright State. You can look it up.
LSU, Oklahoma State, Ole Miss, and Tennessee face must-win games on Monday.
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey will probably ask for an investigation of how this could happen.
Does all this prove that the formula the NCAA uses to decide which teams get invited to the tournament is flawed?
Uh, ya think?
The Rating Percentage Index (RPI) measures a team's strength of schedule and its performance against those teams.
However, there is a built-in bias in the RPI. It rewards teams from power conferences disproportionately, implying that they are automatically better than those outside the club.
While that might be true in football, that assumption is far less accurate in baseball and other sports. SEC teams get a higher strength of schedule because they play each other.
The SEC held the top five rankings in RPI: Vanderbilt, Georgia, Auburn, Texas, and Arkansas. It had nine of the first 13.
UTSA, on the other hand, was 25th, and East Carolina was 66th.
USF checked in at No. 81 in the first year of a rebuild. The Bulls should finish a lot higher next season and beyond, and wouldn't that mess with the almighty RPI formula.
But you know how it works.
The SEC. It just gets more.