The invaders are “at the pearly gates of college baseball,” to quote Texas A&M coach Jim Schlossnagle’s grandiose rhetoric. The swag surfers in Tennessee orange, Smokey gray, or whatever Friday’s garish jersey of the day is, are so near to shore in the country’s only triple-landlocked state.
The Vols have been to the College World Series previously. This is their sixth trip overall, and the third in the previous four years, but they’ve never arrived in Omaha on such high horses wearing their black hats. If rah-rah Kentucky celebrated sharing the SEC regular-season championship “like it was a damn presidential inauguration,” as Vanderbilt Zen master Tim Corbin put it, can you imagine how Tony Vitello’s boys with ‘tudes will let loose if they win everything?
A moment of quiet for Vandy Whistler at the mere thought.
If you’ve been paying attention as the SEC has demonstrated its superior brand of postseason hardball as usual, it should occur. Despite the presence of three other league brothers (A&M, Kentucky, and Florida) and four ACC wannabes (North Carolina, Florida State, Virginia, and NC State), Tennessee should win the College World Series for the first time.
That would make UT the ninth conference member to have won an NCAA baseball championship, and the third newcomer to do so in the last four years, following Mississippi State in 2021 and Ole Miss in 2022. Alabama and Auburn remain part of a diminishing group of SEC institutions that are 0-for-Omaha.
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