The SEC Baseball Tournament features a confusing bracket of 12 teams that is about the worst format imaginable.
Through the years the SEC has grown its baseball championship from 2 teams to 4 to 6 to 8 to 10 and now 12.
The brackets have increased so much we are starting the tournament on Tuesday and it can be hard to figure out which day is single or double elimination.
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There’s a lot of problems with this format. For one, you could have as many as seven teams finish the tourney with one loss (including the champion) and the other five have two losses. How does that make sense?
In order to accommodate 12 teams, each of the four games on Tuesday are single elimination. Then on Wednesday it’s double elimination. After that it’s double, then single but really it’s double, then single and then single again. Got that?
I don’t know that we need to go back to the four team format of the early 80s or the six team format of the late 80s….but Iet’s at least go back to the eight team format of the late 90s/00s. It was double elimination…throughout.
The problem with 12 teams is you have teams like LSU and Vanderbilt playing in a single elimination game with their 4th pitcher on a Tuesday morning. If we’re trying to create an exciting tournament, just eliminate that first round.
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If we just absolutely have to include everyone, then make it single elimination. Softball does it, baseball can too. It’s not like everyone is putting all their marbles in the SEC Tournament anyway. We could go ahead and make it 14 teams and play it out just like the basketball tourney. Easy enough.