By: JJ Lanier

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

When I was a kid, I remember I wanted to attend the college that had the best overall athletic program when it came to the three major sports- football, basketball, and baseball.

This way, no matter the season I would always be rooting for a winning team, not understanding at age 7 how those things fluctuate from year to year. (I actually asked my Dad, who told me Oklahoma at the time, and so for a brief period I was a Sooners fan. Don’t worry, it didn’t last long.)

Keeping that in mind I thought I’d take a look and see which SEC school had the most successful athletic season in those three sports- men’s and women’s, when applicable.

The most objective thing to do would be to assign a point system revolving around standings, post season appearances, and championships.

But, I would end up spending 80% of this article explaining the criteria and who wants to read that. Plus, it’s a lot more fun to just randomly pick a school and then argue it’s merit, right?

After much deliberation, (the amount of time it takes to drink a cup of coffee while listening to Side A of Aerosmith’s “Get A Grip”) I decided it was between three programs: Georgia, Kentucky, and LSU.

Georgia: If you take away the men’s basketball season then Georgia wins this by a landslide. Top 2 conference finishes in both football and baseball, as well as finishing in the upper half of the conference standings in both women’s basketball and softball.

Unfortunately, much to the dismay of some SEC fans, the next to last finish the men’s basketball team suffered this season does count. It’s hard to be the outright winner when you have a year like that in a major sport, even if you have the best finish of the three in the most popular one.

Kentucky: The Wildcats finished in the Top 4 in football, men’s and women’s basketball, and softball; a claim no other program in the SEC can come close to. Come to think, maybe they would win in a landslide??

Oh, that’s right, Kentucky’s baseball team was so abysmal this year the only logical conclusion is Drake owns at least three of their baseball jerseys. If I’m going to hold Georgia’s basketball season against them, I guess I’ve got to do the same with Kentucky’s baseball.

LSU: As for the Tigers, their best and worst finishes came within the same sport- first place finish for the men’s team, ninth place for the women’s. Everything else fell in between.

LSU is kind of like that band with one great hit and a bunch of decent songs nobody really remembers; the “Candlebox of the SEC” if you will.

Out of all three programs though, LSU is the only one to have a team to win a regular season conference title (neither of the three programs had a conference tournament champion among them), so there’s that.

When all is said and done there is really only one thing you need to take away from this article- If my son were to ask me the same question I asked my father over 30 years ago I’m not sure I could tell him which school he should go to, but I could tell him which one not to go to; Vanderbilt. I think we’re all in agreement that outside of their baseball team, they should just go ahead and shut the rest of them down.