One of the oddities of SEC baseball is that it plays a 10 weekend league schedule with 12 teams, meaning you miss one team a year. By odd coincidence, this has led to LSU and South Carolina missing each other for the last 2 years as the Gamecocks have made their mark as a dominant program in college baseball and the class of the SEC. That all gets settled this weekend as the winners of the last 3 National Championships square off with a shot at the SEC regular season championship, the #1 overall seed in next week's tournament, and a potential national Top 8 seed all up for grabs to the winner. I talked with Gamecock Man of the excellent Garnet and Black Attack to get his thoughts on his team and the weekend ahead.

PodKATT: Thanks to the scheduling quirks of the SEC, It's been a while since LSU has played South Carolina and the program has taken off for the stratosphere after 2 straight national titles. What's the culture of the fan base like these days and how prominent would you say the team is in the minds of the average South Carolina fan?

Gamecock Man: Football is king at South Carolina, but we're one of the few schools where baseball probably comes in second (although prolonged futility by the basketball team has a lot to do with that). South Carolina fans love their baseball. That's been true for a while now, and it's become even more true over the past two years, as, after many years of being competitive but not great, we can now lay claim to being an elite program. South Carolina hasn't had much to crow about over the course of its history, so we take a lot of pride in having a great baseball program. That will show this weekend, when you can expect to see a big crowd on hand for what has ended up being one of the premier SEC series of the year.

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Relegation is all the rage this week on SB Nation, as writers try to enthusiastically sell you on the concept of screwing over the worst team in your conference. All of this enthusiasm for the idea tells me that either they are not soccer fans or, if they are, they are the sort of soulless bastard who pulls for Manchester United.

I lived in England for three years, so I supported the local side, Leeds United. If you're not familiar with the history of Leeds, well, it used to be good and now it sort of sucks.

Leeds made the UEFA Champions League semifinals in 2001 and ten years later found themselves bankrupt and in the third division. Yeah, it sounds cool unless it's your team. Leeds wasn't some obscure team, they won titles throughout the 1970s and were a power as late as the 1990s. This would be like Penn St. going through a downward spiral.

A cursory look at the Premiership, or any major European soccer league, shows the effect of relegation - a handful of teams win the title every year while a small middle class barely hangs on but rarely competes for anything. And about half of the league is essentially a permanent underclass trying to avoid relegation. Sounds like fun, huh?

Success is defined by simply not getting kicked out of the league. And the big boys, like Alabama or Ohio St, would win the title every single year as it becomes increasingly difficult to slowly build a team.

Boise St. built their program by consistently dominating a lower conference. Then they got an opportunity to play a big boy well into their run of dominance, which attracted even more recruits to the place and allowed them to sustain success. Under a promotion model, Boise gets kicked up to the Pac-10 three or four years earlier, and they get absolutely dominated by the established teams. They have to be ready right away instead of slowly building their team and playing the big boys when they are finally ready. Under promotion and relegation, Boise likely never becomes this middle class power. It never gets off the ground, and they follow up their first conference title by going 2-7 in the Pac-10 and getting relegated again.

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A team that bats with swords, clearly UNAMERICAN!

We come to the end of another baseball season, the wagons pointed straight home for the postseason, with ground still yet to cover in the final weekend series and the conference tournament in Hoover. But there is one more home match left and it is against our old adversary, the Nicholls St. Kolonels. It's been a banner year for the Commies* (25-25, 12-17 in the Southland), that started off with an opening day win at Southern Miss and non-conference series wins v. ULM and Southeastern on back-to-back weekends. With only 2 conference series wins this season, however, their season may end this weekend as they'll need to sweep S.F. Austin to even reach their post season tournament. Offensively, their numbers aren't that far below LSU's, batting .278 as a team, and they have the reigning LSWA Offensive player of the week in Jeremy Hill (383/509/453 64H 72B 4HR 39RBI). The Commies also love to steal, taking 98 bases out of 113 attempts, something that could be a problem with our current catching situation. Nicholls is starting it's 2nd best starter in Wisecarver tonight, but it looks like he mainly does midweek games. While I'm sure both squads want to win this game, it'll be interesting to see the pitching strategies as both teams have big weekends ahead.

Speaking of pitching strategies, Kurt McCune is getting his first start in more than a month as Eades' continued dip in effectiveness has raised up the alarm that we need another arm for the post season. A good outing tonight could see him get a start in Hoover if needed. Ideally, you want to just win and get home quickly tonight, but consider this: Nicholls has one win against LSU in the last 12 meetings, that win was in 2009, right before LSU started on the path to a National Championship.

Video via the GeauxZone service only, weak chance of a thunderstorm tonight, so we should be fine.

PITCHING MATCHUP via LSUSports.net
LSU - So. RHP Kurt McCune (2-4, 4.21 ERA, 36.1 IP, 13 BB, 22 SO)
NSU - Sr. LHP Mike Wisecarver (1-6, 4.61 ERA, 68.1 IP, 14 BB, 29 SO)

*The whole Nicholls = Communism gag has been running as long as I've been in charge around here, but I have been assured that actual Americans do in fact attend and have graduated from the institution. I've yet to actually meet one, but people I trust say they do exist.

The above was the most entertaining thing to happen at Alex Box over the weekend as the Tigers got sideswiped by a Vandy team that has now become red hot at exactly the right time. It also didn't help that nearly everything that could go wrong did. Lackluster performances from Nola the Younger and Eades, the rare blown save by Goody, Rhymes going 2 for 12 on the weekend and dropping his BA down to .478, and the sudden loss of Ross behind home plate due to appendicitis all contributed to the series loss, the latter of which allowing Vandy to steal with significant success (9 stolen bases combined Saturday and Sunday) and turning what had been a strength into a potential weakness until Snickeris gets up to speed. Ross is recovering well from the surgery, but won't be back until the final rounds of the SEC tournament at the earliest. The weekend wasn't a total loss though, as Gausman's complete game on Friday earned him SEC Pitcher of the Week.

The standings in the SEC are a bit of a mess with a pair of canceled Sunday games that cannot be made up, but LSU is still in terrific shape. We have locked up the SEC West #1 seed for the tournament and it's 1st and 2nd round byes by way of tiebreaker and can do no worse than finish tied for the division title. The overall SEC regular season championship is now a 4 way race between LSU and UK, SCar, and UF out of the east. After Nicholls St tonight, LSU hits the road for a Thurs-Fri-Sat series at SCar.

After being granted his release last week to look around at other schools, Ralston Turner will be transferring to NC State. The Alabama native will, after sitting out a year, be playing for Mark Gottfried, who originally recruited him when he was with the Crimson TIde. After the break, we've got an interview that Johnny Jones did for WAFB.

Les Miles was on Tim Brando's radio show last week, backing up Nick Saban's opinion that a conference championship should not be required for a team to be included in whatever playoff format emerges.

LSU was ranked #1 in the post-spring pre-season early-summer BlogPoll.

In NFL news, Harry Coleman got picked up as an UDFA by Edmonton of the CFL, Will Blackwell had to move up his wedding due to rookie minicamp at Carolina, and Chad Jones has been cut by the Giants after failing a physical, a significant setback after all the work he and the Giants have put in to get him back to playing shape.

Arkansas is having one helluva off season.

SEC public enemy #1 Harvey Updyke had to be escorted away from the SEC Softball tournament last weekend (LSU is headed to the NCAAs at College Station this weekend)

You know you love'em, here's the SEC football helmet schedule.

All of a sudden there is a ton of talk about Florida State potentially moving to the BXII, and not everyone at FSU is on the same page. Our SBN Blog Bros at Tomahawk Nation have excellent coverage of this madness. Also in realignment news, Boise St might be getting cold feet and Louisville just flat wants out of the Big East.

The USFL is coming back as a spring football league.

Northwestern State's baseball game with La Tech last Wednesday was canceled BECAUSE THE FIELD WAS ON FIRE.

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I'm a bit late to the party, what with that whole "new baby" thing. Sorry that your incoherent rants against the football establishment are getting cranked out a week late. But in true LSU fashion, I believe it is better to show up late to the party, once it has already gotten going. Who shows up on time?

Anyway, TSK reviewed the BCS era in a largely-excellent series that you should go read, even if it was published a whole two weeks ago. I know, in internet terms, this means it is already irrelevant. Heaven forbid we have an attention span longer than my two week old child.

The series wraps up with several conclusions to be drawn from the BCS era and the upcoming four-team playoffs, and I hate to disagree with the TSK, but... er... well... I completely disagree with TSK's conclusions. Well, not entirely. Let's take them one at a time:

This is not a panacea for the schools formerly known as non-AQ

Absolutely agree. The big conferences run college football and we have seen them gain power over the last two decades, not lose it. There's a reason the NCAA hasn't moved in to create a playoff with all of the conference champions as automatic qualifiers plus some at large teams to fill out the field - they lack the political capital to do so. The smaller schools have power in the NCAA, and it's reflected in the tournament formats, particularly basketball. It is inclusive over exclusive. In football, the big money schools rule and the only question is how exclusive shall the playoffs be. "Inclusive" is not on the table, nor will it ever be so long as the money schools are in charge.

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