Tennessee’s title keeps the SEC at the top of the college baseball — and sports — world

OMAHA, Neb. — Vestiges of sunlight filtered in behind home plate to illuminate a throng of fans split between the maroon and orange sides Monday night, seemingly cut from a Norman Rockwell painting, as the remaining outs dwindled in the college baseball season.

Tennessee outlasted Texas A&M, 6-5. The Volunteers won their first national championship in baseball amid a battle of attrition at the end. Which of these giants in the college sporting world could stand longer and deliver the last punch?

Classic Americana on the surface, pure as baseball was meant to be played in the broiling summer heat.

But idyllic and comforting to fans of tradition and the hope in sports that everyone who laces up their shoes has got a chance to win, this was not.

Welcome to the next frontier. Pick your sport: baseball, football, basketball or others.

Monday night, the final competition of the 2023-24 collegiate season in all sports was not just a brawl at the end of a series of brawls in Omaha between heavyweight programs. It delivered drama and a kind of tension that’s not always present at the College World Series.

And it reflected the monstrosity, driven by court decisions, effective free agency among athletes, coaching greed and the pricing out of typical fans, that college sports has become.

Plenty exists to enjoy and also to dislike. But it’s here. This is the future.

🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆

6 of the last 7.
5 straight.
A different team every year.

SEC Baseball is absolutely unmatched, y'all. 🤯#ItJustMeansMore pic.twitter.com/vhYLHSoKDD

— Southeastern Conference (@SEC) June 25, 2024

“There’s a lot of cynicism right now in college athletics about a lot of topics,” said Matt Hogue, the outgoing Coastal Carolina athletic director and chair of the 2024 Division I baseball selection committee. “We slice and dice those every day. When you get to the root of it, the competitive drive, the way these guys love playing the game is what really struck me.”

On a night like Monday in Omaha as the celebratory emotions drove Tennessee fans to tears, Hogue’s words resonated. There’s irony, though, in the fact that since his Chanticleers raised the trophy in Omaha in 2016, 11 of 14 programs to play for a national championship compete in the SEC. Another of the 14, Oklahoma, is moving to the SEC next week.

The Sooners are jumping from the Big 12 with Texas. Hours before first pitch Monday in Omaha, Texas fired its baseball coach, David Pierce, placing both coaches involved in the championship game, Tony Vitello of Tennessee and Texas A&M’s Jim Schlossnagle, under a spotlight as potential targets of Longhorns athletic director Chris Del Conte.

Call it arrogance on the part of the Longhorns. Or savvy. Whatever. It’s hardball.

Texas reached a deal on Tuesday to hire Schlossnagle away from its bitter rival.

Yes, the SEC schools play hardball better than anyone else, with ramifications that extend beyond baseball. With Texas and Oklahoma in the SEC, its profile jumps as a football league after the conference produced six of the 10 champions in the four-team College Football Playoff era.

“My view is that (success in baseball) is connected to what we do in the fall, what we do in football, what we do in basketball, baseball and softball,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said Monday as the Vols celebrated on the field at Charles Schwab Field. “People want to be a part of that.”

People who want to compartmentalize football from other sports because of its massive financial impact, Sankey said, are misguided. Nearby stood Peyton Manning, hanging out with Tennessee supporters who included football coach Josh Heupel and men’s basketball coach Rick Barnes. They all wore smiles, content to soak it in.

“The connections among fans,” Sankey said, “building rivalries between sports, it has meaning. The next time (Tennessee and Texas A&M) play in anything, it’s literally going to mean more.”

GO DEEPER

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Sankey is working to build a monster. He’s not failing.

Mississippi State beat Vanderbilt for the title here in 2021. It was Ole Miss over Oklahoma in 2022. LSU beat Florida to win it all last year. Next year, it could just as easily be Arkansas, Kentucky or Texas.

“Always appreciate it and never take it for granted,” Sankey said, “because you understand how hard it is and how competitive college baseball is, especially at the top.

“Young men want to play against the best. It creates the best.”

Stars from the CWS finals last year, Wyatt Langford from Florida and Paul Skenes from LSU, are making waves in Major League Baseball. A year from now, perhaps Christian Moore of Tennessee or Braden Montgomery, the star outfielder from Texas A&M who missed the CWS with an ankle injury, will be next in the pipeline.

The transfer portal brought Skenes and Montgomery to the SEC. When the best players compete at the highest level, they transition more easily to the professional game.

“Unfortunately,” Tennessee’s Vitello said, “some of the rules mean the rich get richer. But everybody’s got an opportunity to get in the tournament and advance here.”

Look at what Coastal Carolina did in 2016, he said.

The fact is, that was a one-time event in the past 15 years. A fluke? Maybe not. But the margin for error has turned increasingly smaller for any program in baseball, football — pick the sport — that’s not competing on and off the field at the elite level.

Vitello said when he got to Tennessee in June 2017, he and his staff looked around. The coach came from Arkansas and understood the SEC landscape. Every successful program had its special power: unmatched fan support, a decorated history, fertile recruiting ground.

Vitello asked a question. “How are we going to compete?”

At Tennessee, rich with support, Vitello knew he couldn’t simply go toe to toe with the SEC baseball royalty. He set out to build a program on grit and attitude.

Their first time in Omaha, in 2021, Vitello said, “We probably all just looked like idiots.”

The culture began to build in Knoxville as Vitello envisioned. The Vols won 60 games this year with a load of talent. But grit and attitude buoyed them on Sunday, down one game in the finals and 1-0 in the seventh inning against the Aggies, and it pushed them to score three runs in the seventh inning Monday, already leading 3-1.

Tennessee needed every bit of it.

“We’ve got all the resources in the world with where we’re at,” Vitello said, “but it’s a place where we kind of had to build a foundation to catch up.”

Former Alabama football coach Nick Saban might disagree, Vitello said, but no team in the Vols’ position can afford to look down on the competition.

“The instant you do that,” Vitello said, “you’re probably going to take an uppercut from one, if not multiple places.”

The punches land heavier today in college sports. And if you’re not delivering a knockout blow, you’re likely on the receiving end.

(Photo: Dylan Widger / USA Today)