In case you missed it, when the NCAA Women's College World Series took place a couple of weeks ago, five of the eight softball teams competing called the Southeastern Conference home, including Florida, which repeated as national champion.
Proving that anything the SEC women can do their male counterparts can do almost as well, four SEC baseball teams, including defending national champ Vanderbilt, make up half the field for the College World Series that started Saturday in Omaha, Neb.
This is how the SEC won 81 NCAA titles during the 13 years just-retired commissioner Mike Slive ran the show - strength in numbers. And given the Gators' recent repeat softball title to jump that total to 82, the embarrassment of riches figures to continue under new commish Greg Sankey, at least partly because the league is embarrassingly rich, having handed each of its 14 institutions a check for $31.2 million last month, which was each school's share of a stunning $455 million revenue pot.
That figure was also $155 million higher than the previous year, due at least in part to the rousing success of the SEC Network, which means the rich are only getting richer.
All of that prompted your humble scribe to seek the wisdom of University of Tennessee at Chattanooga athletic director David Blackburn as to whether this is good for college athletics in general, or if there's any way to slow down the SEC Express.
"Let's be honest," Blackburn said. "Part of the reason for the SEC's success is the money. It allows you to have unbelievable facilities. It allows pay for unbelievable coaches and pay to quickly get rid of the bad ones. And it allows you to recruit the best athletes from all over the country. When you can fly private jets wherever you want to recruit, it will create some separation."
Blackburn doesn't say this jealously, even if UTC's total athletic budget is less than half of the check each SEC school received late last month as something of a bonus.
Instead, Blackburn says this from the experience of having been the recruiting coordinator for former University of Tennessee football coach Phillip Fulmer when the Vols' $1.1 million annual recruiting budget was the biggest in the league.
"It was nothing for Coach Fulmer to fly to California one day to visit a prospect and be in Mississippi the next day to meet with another prospect," Blackburn recalled. "And if you remember, we got some pretty good players out of both California and Hawaii."
Fulmer corralled enough such talent from all over the country to win the first-ever Bowl Championship Series crown over Florida State at the close of the 1998 season. The SEC has more or less dominated college football ever since, winning seven of the past nine titles and reaching the title game an eighth time.
But if the separation was only related to football, which has long been the Deep South's second religion - or as a preacher friend of former Georgia Tech, Alabama, Kentucky and Georgia State football coach Bill Curry once observed, somewhat in jest, "No, it's much more important than that!" - perhaps it would be easier to accept.
This year's fields for NCAA softball and baseball's elite eight show a more far-reaching SEC domination, however. Talk about your separation. And Blackburn's California recruiting analogy especially hits home in softball.
Of Florida's 20-woman roster, seven hailed from either California or Arizona, where prep softball is queen. Tennessee and LSU had five each from the Golden State. Auburn counted four from the Left Coast. Alabama had but two California girls, but four from Texas.
Of course, even UTC has three California kids and one from Washington.
"We try to get (coach) Frank (Reed) out there once a year," Blackburn said. "He's not on any private jet, though."
This isn't to say no one but the SEC has a chance. Duke, not Kentucky, won the NCAA men's basketball tournament. UConn, an American Athletic Conference school, has won the past three women's titles. Ohio State, much to the SEC's chagrin, captured the most recent football crown after Atlantic Coast Conference member Florida State held off Auburn the year before.
Even UTC, despite all its financial shortcomings, knocked off both No. 7 Stanford and big sister Tennessee, ranked fourth at the time, in women's hoops.
"I tell our coaches all the time that we want to outwork our pay," Blackburn said. "We have what we have, and the coaches we have right now are pretty special. You know, you can have a lot of money, but you can also have competence rather than excellence. I think there's a lot of excellence on our staff."
But he also admitted this, which not only goes for the UTCs of college sports, but even some of those lower-tier SEC schools (at least in terms of money) such as Ole Miss and Mississippi State, who have more than $40 million less than Florida and Alabama in their budgets.
"At some point, facilities and salaries can make a huge difference," Blackburn noted. "We all shop with our eyes, and when a high school kid sees some of the facilities the SEC can offer, it's pretty tough to recruit against that. When you look at some of the SEC campuses, it's like the Magic Kingdom at Disney World. It's not the real world."
How long the rest of college athletics outside the SEC will tolerate such an un-level playing field remains to be seen.
"It's like Mike Slive said, 'Amateurism and capitalism are headed for a collision,'" Blackburn said.
If that's true, the odds of amateurism winning are about the same as UTC having the same athletic budget as UT-Knoxville. Only in the Magic Kingdom.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com