Jim Schlossnagle breaks down the hosting discussion involving SEC teams

The SEC is an incredibly dominant league when it comes to the diamond. While only six teams remain in Hoover at the SEC Tournament, several more have made the case to host a regional in the NCAA Tournament.

To Texas A&M’s Jim Schlossnagle, he doesn’t think it’s unfair to have so many teams from the same conference as hosts in the field of 64. If you remove any bias, he says there’s still more than enough to suggest and prove that the SEC teams in that position have earned it.

“If the committee goes on just truly who’s deserving? And solely looks at that without conference bias or anything like that? Then if a team is in this conference and they’ve — if they deserve to host — Kentucky deserves to host. Alabama certainly deserves to host,” said Schlossnagle. “Outside of maybe LSU — LSU and Florida I know are super scary. And Arkansas plays great baseball. But, Alabama, they have something really unique going, even though they lost the game last night.”

D1Baseball shared projections for the NCAA Tournament field on Thursday. In that projection, 10 teams from the SEC made it in. However, only two weren’t hosting as Florida, South Carolina, Arkansas, LSU, Kentucky, Alabama, Vanderbilt, and Auburn would open the postseason on their home fields. Tennessee is one seed off as a No. 2 in the Terre Haute Regional and Schlossnagle’s Aggies were a No. 3 in the Boston Regional.

In the end, Schlossnagle just wants the best teams to get what the committee owes to them. While he has a vested interest in the SEC, he says it doesn’t make a difference as he also believes they’re the programs that are most deserving of hosting.

“I think, if I was on the committee, I would look at each individual situation. And not compare it relative to the conference that it’s in,” Schlossnagle said. “You have to give the host sites or the bids to the teams that have truly earned them. And that would be the case whether it was the SEC or if I was still in the Big 12. I would still feel the exact same way.

“You play through this league and you play a good non-conference schedule and your RPI? I don’t know why you would do anything else,” said Schlossnagle. “The days of regionals being regional? It used to be that way but those are gone. And they should be gone. You give it to the teams that earn it.”

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