By: JJ Lanier

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

When it comes to sports in this country football is the top dog. The NFL is the most popular league and the only thing more fanatical than a college football fan is a southerner when asked “Ford or Chevy?”

Next in line is basketball. Even if you don’t watch any NBA regular season games, I imagine you’ve tuned into at least one playoff game this year, if not more. And is there a sporting event anywhere here that garners more attention and attraction from random people than March Madness?

After football and basketball comes baseball, of course. Major League Baseball may have seen a decline in overall ratings as it becomes a more “regional” sport, so they say, but I still watch every October regardless of who is playing.

Which leads me to college baseball; the one sport that is oftentimes ignored- especially compared to all the others I just mentioned- but where the SEC and ACC have seen even more success than, dare I say, football and basketball, respectively.

Over the past ten years an ACC or SEC school has won the College World Series six times. Ok, full disclosure, that’s a little misleading because five of those championships belong to the SEC. Over that same 10 year span, a team from either conference has made it to the finals in 9 of those years. The one time neither did was in 2015, when Coastal Carolina won the whole thing.

The dominance between both conferences is no different this year. Out of the 64 teams that made the regionals, 16 of those teams are from the ACC or SEC.

Out of the 16 site hosts for those regionals, half of them have been hosted by a team from either conference. (The split between the number of teams hosting their regional is actually four and four, just so you know that both conferences are carrying their weight equally.)

It probably goes without saying, but just in case you’re wondering, all eight of those teams finished the regular season in the Top 10. We haven’t seen this type of dominance since Joey Chestnut was introduced to hotdogs.

There are some great storylines among these teams, too. Can Florida, the overall number one seed, repeat as CWS champions for the first time since South Carolina repeated in 2010 and 2011?

You have Georgia, trying to get back to the CWS for the first time in a decade. And how about North Carolina, who is tied with Northern Colorado for the most World Series appearances (10) without a championship. Will this finally be the year?

Then there’s Duke, who hadn’t won a College World Series playoff game since what felt like the invention of baseball, until they defeated Campbell.

That doesn’t include teams like South Carolina or LSU, who have a long history of success.

Look, I get it; with all the other things going on in our daily lives it’s nearly impossible to keep up with every single sporting taking place. Up until a couple of days ago I couldn’t have told you anything about college baseball this year, not even the name of a single player on a single team. I wouldn’t have even known the playoffs had begun if someone hadn’t told me.

And shame on me, because as much as I love watching football and basketball, there may not be a sport our area dominates more than NCAA baseball. I mean, when was the last time a Coastal Carolina won a championship in either football or basketball.