Does the S.E.C. Benefit From a Baseball Bias?
by T Kyle King on Jun 3, 2008 11:23 PM EDT
in Baseball
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PrintLast Saturday, my SB Nation colleague, James Quinn of Rock Chalk Talk, published a posting in which he charged that college baseball’s tournament selection committee is infused with a pro-S.E.C. bias. Although James characterized this as a "rant," he sold himself short, as his argument was articulate, intelligent, and temperate. In some respects, moreover, he undeniably was correct.
Nevertheless, I have a quarrel with some of his points, which I wish to address in this, the lull between the regionals and the super regionals of the N.C.A.A. baseball playoffs. While I will quote from James’s posting, I would, as always, encourage you to read his thoughts in their entirety, as the excerpts reproduced here will not do his position justice, however much I may endeavor in good faith to represent his thoughts fairly.
Let the debate begin! (Yeah, all right, I know this is a picture of the signing of the Constitution, after the convention debates were over, but I’m trying to work toward consensus here, and, besides, they still had the state ratifying conventions to go, didn’t they? Well, O.K., then.)
Let us start with the part of James’s posting with which it is most difficult to argue; namely, his observation that "Oklahoma’s selection attracted more negative commentary than" the inclusion of Arkansas, a team that had a losing record in conference play (14-15) and made the N.C.A.A. tournament field without first having made the S.E.C. tournament field.
What little room there was to object to this contention dissipated during the regional round, according to the blogosphere’s home for college baseball coverage, Corn Nation. There, Corn Blight reported the ugly truth while echoing James’s sentiment on behalf of a disgruntled Big 12:
League loyalties aside, I find it hard to take issue with that assertion and I concede James’s point that the selection committee would better serve the goal of promoting the sport nationally by selecting deserving "mid-major" squads rather than giving undeserved berths to marginal teams from familiar conferences.
How, though, are we to square James’s valid criticism of the Razorbacks’ inclusion in the tournament field with his grousing about S.E.C. scheduling? He writes (with emphasis added, by me):
Let us leave aside James’s concluding (and conclusory) claim concerning what the success, vel non, of S.E.C. squads in Omaha purportedly bears out (which I do not believe can be squared with his subsequent claim that one of "[t]he big winners so far" is the A.C.C., which annually achieves much but which hasn’t won a College World Series in more than half a century). Besides . . . what business do the Big 12 faithful have carping about the supposed region-wide home field advantage of a tournament that culminates in Nebraska every single year?
I simply don’t believe you can reconcile James’s entirely warranted objection to Arkansas’s inclusion with his overemphasis upon non-conference games played outside one’s native land, in light of the fact that the Hogs played over one-third of all the games S.E.C. teams played outside the South. Well, which is it? Is it important for a program to rack up the frequent-flyer miles or isn’t it? If it is (and I do not believe it is), how can you deny that Arkansas deserves credit for having played so many of the games James derides the rest of the league for having eschewed?
I am all in favor of national scheduling in major sports, but, at the end of the day, the quality of a team’s opposition matters much more than its Z.I.P. code. If James disputes that claim, then why did he bother comparing Oklahoma’s R.P.I. to that of four S.E.C. squads? What does R.P.I. matter if the real question is how many state lines a club crossed in the course of non-conference play?
What made this criticism particularly galling was the following comment, which was left after James’s posting by Rock M Nation’s rptgwb:
See: non-conference schedules for their upper-echelon football teams.
To be fair to rptgwb, he goes on to offer the reasonable concession that climatic conditions have much to do with S.E.C. teams’ February and March slates. In a subsequent comment, James acknowledged this point but downplayed its significance, countering:
James’s facts are technically correct but misleadingly presented. Yes, the Diamond Dogs lost their series with the Beavers on the opposite side of the continent, dropping a two-run decision and a one-run decision while sandwiching a five-run victory in between. Yes, O.S.U. finished near the cellar, but they started as the two-time defending national champions. Between February 22 and March 29---the period during which Georgia faced Oregon State---the Beavers went 13-7.
Heck, that’s good enough that I’m not even going to make fun of their uniforms.
As I pointed out over the weekend, this portrayal of the Red and Black’s scheduling betrays nothing more than outmoded attitudes which smack of anti-S.E.C. bias every bit as much so as James claims the selection committee’s decisions carry the whiff of pro-S.E.C. bias. (Evidently, this skewed view is common among Big 12 partisans, as indicated by Corn Blight’s observation---the italics are his addition, not mine---that "[m]ost definitely I’ll be rooting against the SEC.")
Georgia opened the 2008 campaign with a three-game set against Arizona, the No. 1 seed in the Ann Arbor Regional, which will meet Miami (Florida) in the super regional round this weekend. Should that series be dismissed as unimportant because it was played in the Classic City on the weekend before Georgia traveled to Portland? Does the intervening exhibition game against the Atlanta Braves, which did not count in the standings but may have had an effect on the Diamond Dogs’ play two days later, vanish from all significance because it took place in Lake Buena Vista?
The Red and Black split a two-game midweek clash with Florida State in Tallahassee, site of the regional hosted by the No. 4 national seed. Was the Bulldogs’ victory over the Seminoles inconsequential because F.S.U.’s home field is in an adjacent state? Did playing at Clemson and at Georgia Tech on consecutive Wednesdays in April amount to naught because those ancient rivals’ campuses may be reached by automobile rather than by airplane?
Were games against Oregon State, Purdue, and Southern California on the first three weekends of the 2007 season unimportant because they were played in Athens? Did it matter that the Trojans were returning the games from Georgia’s trip to Los Angeles in March 2006, or did a road trip to face U.S.C. by the Pacific Ocean not count as an out-of-region junket because the Diamond Dogs were playing the University of Southern California?
To be fair, the Men of Troy’s sideline mascot does ride a mount named Traveler, who shares his nomenclature with Robert E. Lee’s horse.
The added jab at "non-conference schedules for their upper-echelon football teams" from rptgwb is what made the sideswipe at the Red and Black so aggravating, though. I think it’s fair to say that Georgia is an upper-echelon S.E.C. football team and the Bulldogs’ upcoming out-of-conference slates include trips to play at Arizona State in 2008, at Oklahoma State in 2009, at Colorado in 2010, at Louisville in 2012, and at Oregon in 2015. Do two treks to non-Texan Big 12 country, two treks to Pac-10 country, and one trip to a Big East border state in the next eight seasons seem particularly insular? Are criticisms of Georgia’s non-conference scheduling in football seriously being endorsed by a fan of the Kansas Jayhawks?
Accordingly, I have a real problem with this statement from James’s posting:
To reiterate, I concede James’s point about S.E.C. teams such as Arkansas, but the Hogs’ inclusion in the field is a problem arising at the bottom between flawed teams of dubious worthiness, none of whom---those who get in, as well as those who don’t---really can claim that they earned the No. 4 regional seeds they received or were denied, as the case may be.
Regarding regional hosts and national seeds, however, the Big 12 has no legitimate gripe with the S.E.C. Regular-season conference champion Georgia and conference tournament champion Louisiana State garnered the last two national seeds; both earned their way in, and both advanced . . . which is more than might be said for the Big 12. How much good would it have done Nebraska and Oklahoma State to have been given the opportunity to host the super regionals in which they did not thereafter earn the right to participate?
James makes his several points in a cogent manner with a reasonable tone, and much of what he says cannot be gainsaid. As right as he is when it comes to the squads at the bottom, though, he is glaringly wrong about the teams at the top. The N.C.A.A. selection committee should heed his wisdom when selecting No. 4 seeds, but the decisions made regarding regional hosts and national seeds have been borne out by the results.
The selection committee knew what it was doing when it rewarded Georgia and its Golden Spikes Award finalist Gordon Beckham with the right to host the first two rounds of the playoffs, as evidenced by the Diamond Dogs’ impressive postseason rebound. Say what you will about the existence of a supposed S.E.C. bias, but, as the students on Kudzu Hill so eloquently put it, you can’t spell "super regional" without U-G-A.
Go ‘Dawgs!
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Home Field Advantage
That LSU and UGA won their regionals only partly answers the criticism that they didn’t deserve the hosting honor. Mr. Quinn bemoaned the home field advantage bestowed upon the Bayou Bengals and Classic City Canines as undeserved. One still could argue that had these teams not enjoyed the undeserved home field advantage, they would not have been as successful.
Setting aside the Super Regional honor for a moment, however, if one examines the 16 regional sites, one finds that two were placed at SEC schools (Baton Rouge, Athens) and three were given to Big XII locations (Stillwater, College Station, Lincoln). Mr. Quinn does not specify which three Big XII teams “appeared stronger than Georgia” and were, therefore, more deserving to host a Super Regional, so I hesitate to assume they were necessarily Oklahoma State, Texas A&M, and Nebraska. But whereas both LSU and UGA emerged from their regional contests victorious, two of the three Big XII teams that served as hosts this weekend (Oklahoma State and Nebraska) could not manage to get it done even with the “significant competitive advantage”, as Mr. Quinn put it, of playing at home.
To be fair, hindsight is 20/20, and Mr. Quinn acknowledged the risk of posting his observations before any regional results were available.
Good points . . .
. . . and I certainly don’t want to take James to task too harshly for his points, which were presented in a reasonable manner.
One other point bears making about Texas A&M, the only Big 12 regional host to have advanced to the super regionals. The Aggies’ second-round games this weekend will be hosted by No. 6 national seed Rice. The Owls hail from Houston, which is about 100 miles from College Station. Obviously, both teams are in the Lone Star State.
Based upon James’s logic, what business would Texas A&M have complaining about having to play in a super regional in its home state in a major metropolitan area roughly an hour and a half away from the Aggies’ hometown?
After all, if the Diamond Dogs are going to be denied credit for playing virtually all of their games in the South (despite the fact that their schedule included Arizona in Athens, Clemson in Clemson, Florida in Gainesville, Florida State in Tallahassee, Georgia Tech in Atlanta, L.S.U. in Baton Rouge, and Vanderbilt in Nashville), why should Texas A&M be given sympathy for having to appear in a super regional within easy driving distance of home?
It either has to be one way or the other. Either a tough road game is a tough road game even if it’s close to home (which I believe to be the case) or “home region advantage” applies to the 16.67 per cent of Big 12 tournament teams that made it through the first round equally as much as to the 22.22 per cent of S.E.C. tournament teams that made it through the first round.
Once again, James is a good guy who stated his case fairly and, in many instances, correctly, but I don’t exactly cotton to having my alma mater’s sports teams’ scheduling practices criticized by folks who are looking ahead to football season while expressing such sentiments as “this is an entirely different FIU team with an entirely different mindset” with a straight face.
Go 'Dawgs!
Corroborating evidence . . .
. . . comes to us from Burnt Orange Nation, where Horn Brain had this to say at the outset of the first round:
We’re in Houston, where we ought to get some good crowd support to help us get past Rice (though they’ll probably have good fan support, too… probably…) and the other guys in our regional, #3 St. John’s and #4 Sam Houston State. . . .Second worst-case scenario (Worst being not making it out of Houston), Texas has to play in College Station for super regional action, a place that we haven’t exactly had trouble with, 12th man and all, recently.
It appears that the Longhorn faithful have taken judicial notice of the fact that a Big 12 team ought to be able to count on favorable fan support in Houston, so any Big 12 griping about the S.E.C.’s two national seeds holds no water whatsoever.
Go 'Dawgs!
One last point . . .
. . . and then I’ll be quiet:
All eight national seeds advanced.
Sounds like the selection committee had a pretty good idea what it was doing.
Go 'Dawgs!
Follow Up
What does the fact that the CWS is played in Omaha have anything to do with the Big 12 faithful? Or the Road to Omaha for that matter. Putting the two together is a cheap trick.
—-—-—-—-—-—
Anti-SEC sentiment is true, and it comes specifically from the statement I made about Arkansas. You can trumpet the success of your hosting teams, but it’s still irritating to me that a team that couldn’t make it’s conference tournament makes it to the big one. Had this happened in football, there’d be an explosion.
I should point out that I don’t have a problem with Arkansas. Dave Van Horn, current Razorback coach formerly brought Nebraska out of the toilet of college baseball and built us into a team that Husker fans could be proud of on a perennial basis. I like Van Horn, and I follow Razorback baseball, and hope they’re successful because of him.
This year that wasn’t the case and they made the tourney because of a pro-SEC bias. Turning this into “they’re all against us”.... well, go ahead, but you haven’t disputed the fact that there is one.
Go Big Red Nebraska!
Our Cobs Are Bigger Than Yours!
Corn Nation!
well poo
that top part should be a quote.
Besides . . . what business do the Big 12 faithful have carping about the supposed region-wide home field advantage of a tournament that culminates in Nebraska every single year?
Go Big Red Nebraska!
Our Cobs Are Bigger Than Yours!
Corn Nation!
Much obliged, Corn Blight
First of all, I want to thank you for stopping by. This is an important topic and I’m glad to see that college baseball is starting to get its due in the intercollegiate athletics blogosphere. With respect to your specific points, I would offer the following responses:
What does the fact that the CWS is played in Omaha have anything to do with the Big 12 faithful? Or the Road to Omaha for that matter. Putting the two together is a cheap trick.
My point is that James, along with all the Big 12 partisans who share his view, is guilty of trying to have it both ways. S.E.C. schedules generally, and Georgia’s schedule specifically, drew criticism for the sole reason that the Bulldogs seldom traveled outside the South, without regard for the fact that the Red and Black played numerous tough road games along the way.
If you’re going to treat this as some sort of "home region advantage" (a concept I don’t buy, but which James’s argument presumes exists), then you have to apply your principles fairly across the board and acknowledge that Big 12 teams have an unfair advantage in Omaha, which is, after all, located in a Big 12 state.
I don’t believe the Big 12 has an advantage in Omaha, but, if you believe Georgia has an advantage in Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Clemson, Gainesville, Nashville, and Tallahassee, intellectual honesty compels you to accept that premise. There’s nothing cheap about calling attention to an apparent instance of cognitive dissonance.
Anti-SEC sentiment is true, and it comes specifically from the statement I made about Arkansas. You can trumpet the success of your hosting teams, but it’s still irritating to me that a team that couldn’t make it’s conference tournament makes it to the big one. Had this happened in football, there’d be an explosion.
I freely conceded that James and you were correct upon this point, and I will reiterate it for emphasis: Arkansas did not deserve to make the N.C.A.A. tournament field, period. I am all for a blanket rule that denies entry to any team from a 12-member conference that did not make its eight-team league tourney field and I agree completely that James is right that the selection committee would better serve the sport by taking deserving mid-majors from lesser-known conferences in place of marginal teams like the Razorbacks. Upon this point we have no disagreement.
However, it is not fair to translate that into an overarching condemnation of all S.E.C. squads. The Hogs were the last S.E.C. team into the tournament; their inclusion says absolutely nothing about the worthiness of the eight teams ahead of them. In particular, Arkansas’s presence in the field in no way reflects upon whether L.S.U. and Georgia deserved national seeds.
This year that wasn’t the case and they made the tourney because of a pro-SEC bias. Turning this into "they’re all against us"…. well, go ahead, but you haven’t disputed the fact that there is one.
No, I haven’t, because I conceded James’s point regarding the teams at the bottom. At the risk of repeating myself, though, that has no bearing whatsoever on the teams at the top. I don’t think "they’re all against us"--although your sweeping statement that you would be rooting against Southeastern Conference teams as a matter of course and the glee with which Rock Chalk Talk greeted the news of the Diamond Dogs’ opening-game loss to Lipscomb aren’t helping your case that Big 12 fans aren’t knee-jerk in their disdain for the S.E.C.—but, when a guy who has a valid point to make about the marginal teams at the bottom of the bracket allows his justified outrage at the inclusion of an undeserving Arkansas squad to poison his attitude towards a deserving Georgia team that proved its worthiness on the field just because the Bulldogs and the Razorbacks have been in opposite divisions of the same conference for a little over 15 years, I’m sorry, he loses all claim to my sympathy for his position.
I, one of those big bad narrow-minded S.E.C. types, conceded a reasonable point made in a reasonable manner but took issue with the unnecessary breadth of the accompanying broadsides against my team and my conference, which extended as far as maligning our football scheduling in a manner that simply fails to reflect the present reality. I don’t think it’s the least bit unreasonable for me to ask my Big 12 brethren to meet me halfway in acknowledging that, while many of their arguments are valid, their blanket contempt for the S.E.C. simply is not warranted.
I hope we will be able to reach consensus upon that point, but, even if we will have to agree to disagree, I thank you again for stopping by and I am especially grateful for your efforts to promote college baseball in the blogosphere. I will continue to stop by Corn Nation as the tournament continues and I encourage all Dawg Sports readers to do likewise.
Go 'Dawgs!
the
thing about travel is that it applies pretty much across the board in college baseball, and I’m supposing to be fixing a Blackberry server, so I’m going off the top of my head here.
Most baseball teams play in their geographic area, look at Florida State’s yearly schedule and they typically have a fabulous record because they play their conference, then midweek they beat the hell out of all the smaller schools around them. That’s true for a lot of ‘Southern’ or warm-weather teams.
So, let’s say that the SEC isn’t much different in this regard. The problem with the SEC bias occurs with most other things being equal, they are given preferential treatment when it comes to the NCAA tourney selection. They’re expected to be better. Unfortunately, most years there’s no way of knowing whether they are or not because, like other warm-weather conferences, they’re not playing top teams in other conferences enough to determine which conference is better.
That’s the problem with using the RPI… which isn’t exact, but its also a BIG problem for schools like Wichita State and Coastal Carolina. Two schools that are perennially fielding good college baseball teams, but play in fairly weak conferences. In order to boost their RPI, they’re forced to travel, and play whatever big school will have them. Not so much a problem for Wichita State since they’ve got a number of Big 12 schools around them, but a bigger problem for CC in that some schools just won’t play them.
What happens is that the selection committee runs out of teams they can measure on a head-to-head basis and therefore they resort to the RPI, which is inherently flawed. Since the SEC is a good conference, like the Big 12, the RPI is skewed on their behalf. Poof – SEC bias, ala Arkansas gets into the tourney instead of someone else.
If I had any brains, I’d be posting this on Corn Nation as a response, I guess, but… man.. I’m reaching a a level of burn out and therefore a little apathy is setting in. :)
Go Big Red Nebraska!
Our Cobs Are Bigger Than Yours!
Corn Nation!
just
noticed you guys won your first game in the Super.
so my karma sucks. or my kung fu is weak. as if I needed more evidence to that regard.
Go Big Red Nebraska!
Our Cobs Are Bigger Than Yours!
Corn Nation!
Nah, you're good, Corn Blight
James, you, and I are on the same page regarding Arkansas. I like the point James made (and the way James made it) that, since the selection committee has stated as one of its goals the desire to boost college baseball at the national level, one way the N.C.A.A. could do that would be to give smaller schools the benefit of the doubt at the bottom of the bracket. There’s no question it would be better for a good team from a small school with little name recognition--the diamond equivalent of a George Mason in the basketball tournament—to get in than an Arkansas team that didn’t make it to Hoover.
By the way, three of the top four national seeds are A.C.C. teams, yet Florida State lost to Wichita State earlier today and Arizona is tied with Miami (Florida) in the seventh inning in Coral Gables. Perhaps all of us in Big 12 and S.E.C. country could band together and start a shared anti-A.C.C. bias? Just a thought.
Go 'Dawgs!
Follow-up:
Here are Friday’s super regional results involving A.C.C. teams:
Wichita State 10
Florida State 7
Arizona 6
Miami 3
The Hurricanes and the Seminoles were nationally-seeded home teams.
Of course, these are opening-game results of three-game series; it remains quite within the realm of possibility that all three will rebound to win the final two contests and advance to Omaha.
Still, as long as we’re on the subject of conferences receiving a level of credit that may be in excess of what they deserve, I think some questions may have been raised about the A.C.C. by virtue of Friday’s results.
Go 'Dawgs!
On the other hand . . .
N.C. State 10
Georgia 6
North Carolina 9
Coastal Carolina 4
Florida State 14
Wichita State 4
So much for that theory. . . .
Go 'Dawgs!
On the other hand . . .
. . . here is an opposing viewpoint from And the Valley Shook.
I do not share A.T.V.S.’s view, but, in the interest of furthering discussion, I have linked to it for your consideration.
Go 'Dawgs!
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