Russell Report: Can the latest Gator Baseball team win propel them to a super-regional?

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WCJB) - Congratulations to the Gator Baseball team for winning an SEC regular season championship along with Arkansas after the dust settled on an exciting regular season. Most believed the Gators had a very talented team and now is where that gets proven, in the postseason. Florida certainly looks to be in line to be a top eight national seed which means they would host both a regional and a super-regional if they win the regional. Omaha is the goal for this team and the road to get there starts in earnest this week when postseason begins at the SEC Tournament.

The SEC spring meetings will begin shortly, and many think the league will announce, among other things, its new football format. It looks like there will no longer be divisions with the two teams with the best records squaring off in the SEC title game. Yet to be determined is whether or not the league will play an eight or a nine-game league schedule and which teams will be grouped together and what should be four team pods. Sadly, some rivalries, like Florida and LSU for instance, could be scrapped with Texas and Oklahoma entering the league but we’ve seen that happen before when Florida and Auburn went away years ago. The goal, however, is clear. The league wants players and fans to get to play the other league opponents on a more consistent basis and that should be a good thing.

Meanwhile the ACC meetings just got over and boy you could hear the Sabers rattling all the way down here. Some of the big boys in the ACC like Clemson, Florida State and others are not happy with their grant in rights contract with ESPN that lasts all the way until 2036 and those schools complain, rightfully so, that it doesn’t allow them to keep up monetarily with conferences like the Big 10 and the SEC with those huge dollar media contracts. But don’t believe all the nonsense about leaving the ACC. The league just announced record revenue of $617M, or about $40M to each school. Sounds pretty good, until you notice the SEC brings in $721M. This is worth keeping an eye on but no one from the ACC is going anywhere, yet.

Finally, a time to remember the great Jim Brown, who passed away over the weekend at age 87. As a young boy growing up, he was the man. I tried to run like him, be physical and run over people like him and he is for me the best running back to ever play the game. If he had not retired in 1965, right in the middle of his prime, who knows how many yards he would have run for. In college at Syracuse, he lettered in four sports, and he is still considered one of the greatest lacrosse players of all time. Off the field, he was involved in several incidents and arrested a half dozen times. But on the football field, for me, no one was better at playing the game. RIP Number 32. I’m Steve Russell, that’s the Russell Report.

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