There's a lot of political and long-term structural issues in college sports that I really want to address this week, but let's talk actual sports first. Conference realignment, distribution of money, and football's postseason play are all important issues which rightfully take a lot of our attention. This stuff matters, and will shape the sports we watch for decades.

But none of that matters when there are actual sports to watch.

Backroom politics are interesting to write about and discuss, but it pales in the excitement and emotion of the games themselves. Sometimes you have to turn the blogs and news pages off and just watch the games. Because the games are pretty great.

LSU, if you didn't notice, just had one of its best sports weekends of the academic year. The baseball team won its weekend series, on the road against a top ten team, to win the outright regular season title (thanks to an epic collapse by Kentucky). The softball team then went out and beat Texas A&M in College Station to advance to the Supers. Both series capping games were incredibly tense and exciting affairs. It's why I watch sports.

I'm not going to get on my high horse and talk about how I hate conference realignment and how it detracts from the purity of the game or some such nonsense. Hell, I love that backroom stuff. It's a blast to follow. But it still pales in comparison to the thrill of a tightly contested ballgame that only has the whole season hanging in the balance. No pressure.

Even better, the sports talking heads didn't even notice. There will be no fake fights on ESPN or endless talk radio patter manufacturing some absurd controversy. The only people talking about the games today are those who love the sport with other people who love the sport. Amazing, isn't it?

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Go ahead, raise your hand if you had "outright SEC regular season Championship" as the outcome for this team at the beginning of the year. Mason Katz was awarded the SEC Player of the Week for his stellar weekend at South Carolina that included what would be the game and series winning RBI, but let's not diminish the stellar job Jackson Slaid did in breaking the tie in the 10th. Slaid had to be pulled from the bullpen to pinch hit as he had been warming up Nick Goody due to our lack of healthy catchers.

With the #1 seed and the bye, LSU will play Wednesday at around 12:30-1pm against either Ar-kansas, Ole Miss, Miss St., or Kentucky depending on the outcome of Tuesday's games. The tournament remains double elimination, but with 10 teams it has gotten a bit complicated. LSU has never lost an SEC tournament it has participated in in the Mainieri Era and would only need 4 wins to take the title. All the teams are in Hoover today for batting practice and traditionally the SEC has a preview show live from the park sometime in the afternoon where various players, coaches, and media pundits take a turn on the stage. I'll share a link here when it's available. Tuesday through Thursday there will be 4 games a day broken into 2 sessions, the morning games being televised in Louisiana on Fox Sports and the afternoon games on Cox Sports. The entirety of the tournament will also be on ESPN3.com, but you will potentially face local blackout restrictions depending on your cable service.

With LSU's Top 8 National Seed locked up, SEBaseball.com has a great rundown of all the other tournament action around the country worth following, including the outlooks for the rest of the SEC, Tulane, Southeastern, and others.

There was other diamond action of importance in College Station over the weekend as the Lady Tigers used the power of the RALLY CONE to break a pitcher's duel shutout with Texas St on Friday, then wiped out regional host and Top 8 national seed Texas A&M to advance to the women's super regional round for the first time since 2007. In an odd coincidence, the Tigers will head to future SEC foe Mizzou for their super regional round next weekend.

(Side Note: If you've ever wondered what LSU Baseball uniforms would look like if Nike was given free reign, take a look at the softball team. I'm not a fan of all of it, but things like the faint Tiger Stripe pattern on the batting helmets might work for the baseball team)

Another season in the books, and yet more whining and complaining from the B1G about how amazingly unfair college baseball is to schools up north. There's nothing new in the article that we didn't hear earlier this season (the only thing of note is that the B1G confirmed they will bring up their ridiculous fall baseball plan with the NCAA officially this summer) but what's interesting is what isn't in the article. Lots of wailing from coaches and admins who are unsuccessful is in there, but not a peep from Purdue or it's coach, a program that is VERY successful this year and has made a significant commitment to improving their program, a commitment that incidentally is causing Purdue issues when it comes to hosting. I would like nothing more than for Purdue to reach Omaha this year and prove that yes, it can be done if you have snow on the ground until March. Then we won't have to hear these damaging ideas from a conference that has money to throw around but as much significance in the sport as the MAC does.

One last note on the B1G and college baseball, Jim Delaney has found a way to guarantee an All B1G field at TD Ameritrade in Omaha in 2014: He moved the conference tournament there.

LSU graduated a full slate of seniors from almost every sport on Friday. The big "returned to graduate" name this semester was Demetrius Byrd, who you still cannot see.

The interview I posted last week of new men's basketball coach Johnny Jones was actually just a sample of a 20 minute interview he gave to WAFB, which you can watch here.

LOLO premiers tonight at 6pm on ESPNU.

UNO is taking the steps to rejoin D1 and has hired a new AD, LSU Alum Derek Morel.

Tulane is suing the city of New Orleans 1to block the recent zoning decisions that will hinder it's plans for a new on-campus stadium.

Strange and important things are happening in the world of college football after the SEC and BXII announced their bowl partnership last week (a game that even without the conference champions would have produced some great matchups over the past years). It may be the next step in the line of dominoes that sets off the Superconference movement. It might cause FSU to join the Big XII. It might NOT cause FSU to join the BXII. It might cause the basketball conferences of the ACC and Big East to be left out of the playoff system. There's a strong likelihood that all of that will prove inaccurate over the next 24 hours or the next week.

What I do know is this: It's damned entertaining to watch all of these teams and conferences flail around grasping for money and relevancy while LSU is comfortably ensconced as a power team in the power conference. Let the rest of the college football world tear itself to pieces trying to secure a spot at the table for whatever the future holds. LSU is already there.

UPDATE: Thursday Rain Out, Details after the break.

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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