SEC Dixie-nary: S is for SEC Tournament

S is for SEC Tournament

The SEC Baseball Tournament takes place at Regions Park in Hoover, Alabama (home of the Double-A Birmingham Barons), each year. (Virtual Tour of Regions Park)

With the expansion of the SEC to 14 teams, a new format for the Tournament was announced on December 19th.

♦ SEC Announces Format Change To Baseball Tournament (secdigitalnetwork.com)

The 2012 SEC Baseball Tournament, which will be held in Hoover, Ala., at Regions Park for the 15th consecutive year, will increase to 10 teams and will begin on Tuesday, May 22nd. The tournament will continue to follow a format that is modeled in a similar fashion to previous SEC Tournament and College World Series brackets. The 10 teams are seeded 1-10 with the two divisional champions guaranteed of the top two seeds and first-round byes. Games played from Tuesday thru Friday are double elimination with single elimination starting on Saturday. The tournament field will include the top teams from the SEC’s Eastern and Western Divisions plus eight at-large bids seeded 3-10 based on conference winning percentage.

The SEC has also announced the beginning of a Baseball Legends Program, modeled similarly after the popular ‘Legend’s and ‘Greats’ programs that surround the SEC Football Championship Game and the SEC Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments. Four former SEC baseball standouts will be honored on-site as part of the annual baseball tournament each year beginning in May of 2012.

According to an article last month in the Columbia Tribune, expansion of the tournament field was discusses at the SEC Baseball Coaches Meeting in early November:

The league coaches, however, recommended expansion of the SEC Tournament from eight teams to 10 or 12. Jamieson, who lobbied for a 12-team bracket, said that letting more teams play beyond the regular season would bolster the conference’s argument to reach double-digit bids.

“What you want to avoid in future years is having teams that don’t qualify for the conference tournament having to fight that battle to get into the NCAA Tournament,” Jamieson said. “The conference has gotten bigger and it’s gotten stronger. … That deserves serious consideration.”

Former MU Assistant Coach and current Mississippi State Head Coach John Cohencommented on the change:

“When you see a team as good as LSU was last year and still not get into the NCAA Tournament, that’s certainly something we all thought about because LSU was a very, very good team,” Mississippi State coach John Cohen said. “Had LSU gotten into an NCAA regional, they could have gone all the way. The league itself is interested in getting as many teams into the NCAA Tournament and to Omaha as possible. Certainly that’s just one of the benefits to go to a 10-team field.”

The 2010 tournament drew over 126,000 total fans (an average of 10,000 per game).

The entire tournament is broadcast on regional TV, with the championship game on national TV.

Distribution of Revenue Generated by SEC Baseball Tournament

All guaranteed revenues shall be divided as follows:

1. Each participating institution will be provided a per diem of $75 per day for up to 30 individuals for each day the institution plays a game. The per diem revenue will be paid on a percentage basis of available funds;
2. Each participating institution shall receive a travel allowance of $30 per mile one-way. The travel allowance will be paid on a percentage basis of available funds; and
3. Any revenue above full expenses of the participating teams shall be divided into 13 [this quoted rule is from a rule book written prior to the addition of Missouri and Texas A&M] equal shares, with one share to each member institution and one share to the Conference

Regions Park in Hoover, Alabama