In college baseball, the south has something to say. Again

This year's College World Series is made up entirely of southern teams. It's reflective of the past 50 years of the sport's history

The 1995 Source Awards are one of the seminal moments in the 50-year history of hip-hop.

The show, which took place at the Paramount Theater in New York, came at the height of the East Coast-West Coast feud that ultimately claimed the lives of two of the greatest rappers to ever pick up a microphone, both of whom died before their 26th birthday.

To this day, it’s most well known for Death Row Records impresario Suge Knight standing before a largely hostile crowd during an acceptance speech to proclaim that an act should sign with his label if they wanted to be an artist and not have to “worry about the executive producer tryna be all in the video, all on the record, dancin'.” It was a not-so-subtle shot at the man then known as Puff Daddy of rival Bad Boy Records, whose herb-like tendencies regularly put him in the background of songs and videos of much more talented artists on his label doing exactly what Knight described (given what we’ve learned over the past year about Sean Combs, it’s actually probably one of his more endearing traits).

Depending on where in the country you hail from, there’s another moment from that fateful night that stands out.

Early in the show, OutKast was awarded New Group of the Year, beating out Brooklyn-based Smif-N-Wessun for the honor. The East Coast crowd, none too pleased with the result, booed the Atlanta duo as they walked on stage. Near the end of the group’s acceptance speech, Andre 3000 shot back with a line that still resonates nearly 30 years later.

“The South got somethin’ to say,” he said triumphantly yet with a sort of understated confidence. “That’s all I got to say.”

He was talking about the south’s role in hip-hop as an art form – words that proved to be prophetic given the region’s outsized role in the genre’s identity and broader culture today – but it’s a sentiment that could be applied just as effectively to college baseball.

Though, upon second thought, there’s really no reason to make that kind of bold assertion. It’s a long-understood fact in the sport. The south has something to say in college baseball. And it’s been saying it for quite a while.

This year’s College World Series commenced Friday in Omaha, Neb., with eight teams vying for championship glory. Those eight programs embarked on different journeys to reach this point – from Florida State, which is in the event for the 24th time, to Kentucky, which is making its CWS debut – but they’re unified by a common trait: they’re all from, generally speaking, the south, with Kentucky the northernmost program represented in the field.

Last year following LSU’s march to the NCAA title, I wrote about the SEC’s dominance of the sport, with the league accounting for the past four and five of the past six national champions. But this year’s CWS – with four teams apiece from the SEC and ACC, two overwhelmingly southern-based leagues – is proof that success in the sport is based just as much on where in the country you’re located as what conference of which you’re a member.

It’s not just this year, either.