Scooter Hobbs column: LSU, Arkansas playing for CWS title early?
Sometimes it seems like it takes a month to decide a champion, but in truth it never cracked the two-week mark, though it's always been full of ups and downs and soap opera turns of the plot.
It's baseball at its best — no clock, as LSU coach Jay Johnson likes to remind us (and few coaches seem more intent on dragging games into four-hour territory than he does, with pride, no less, and few apologies).
The CWS has squeezed it in some this year, condensed the road to the finals to better position the championship round for weekend television.
Never mind that.
This year things are going to happen quickly.
No need to settle in.
Ignore the silly jello-shot challenge across the street from Charles Schwab Stadium.
Just watch LSU and Arkansas tonight.
It's the final game of the opening round, both teams' first appearance.
And, it says here with no false modesty, the winner of the Hogs and Tigers is — or will be — your national champion.
They'll play out the rest of both converging brackets and go through the motions of the championship series.
But the national championship is up for grabs tonight.
And why not?
LSU and Arkansas might not be the two best teams in the country, but they're the two best teams in Omaha.
Also in their bracket, playing straight men to the main attractions, are UCLA and Murray State, the latter this year's heartwarming Cinderella story.
It famously gets dark late in Omaha, but midnight tends to come early for aspiring Cinderellas up here.
But thanks for playing, Racers.
Over in the other bracket, Louisville, Oregon State Arizona and the rare Cinderella success story, Coastal Carolina in 2016, will do their own jostling.
None seem capable of scaring Hogs or Tigers.
It would be perfect if the bracketologists had set up Arkansas and LSU for the championship round.
But the bracket is what it is, and those intruders beat good teams to get here. No need to re-seed just because some favorites were tripped up.
One thing for sure, it will have a championship-game electricity with maybe the country's two best baseball fan bases filling the place up.
The Hog Hats had the easier drive north, but LSU is famous for taking over Geauxmaha and will have their loyal Cornfield Alumni to even things out.
Maybe Arkansas is due.
LSU has seven national championships and the most exhilarating moment in CWS history with the Warren Morris deal.
Arkansas is the best program with zero championships and surely has the most excruciating loss in the championship's history. The Hogs had a routine foul ball there for the catching that would have ingnited a 2018 championship pig-pile but instead was dropped and opened the door for an Oregon State comeback.
Otherwise, the SEC would have won the last seven titles instead of just the last five.
If Arkansas is the next champ up, it will make six different SEC to win the last six titles.
Either team could win it all. One of them should .
And one of them will get a leg up in the key game of the CWS.
Yes, we're moving the so-called 'marble game' up in the rotation. It's the game Skip Bertman anointed as the key game.
Normally, you recall, it's the second game that leaves you the last unbeaten in the bracket and makes somebody have to beat you twice.
Tonight's CWS-opening winner is going to be hard to beat.
Johnson begs to differ, though he doesn't argue the benefits.
He's been to the championship best two-of-three twice, once with Arizona (where he lost to Coastal Carolina), again two years ago in leading LSU to its seventh title.
'The two times I've been in the finals,' he noted, 'we've lost one of the first two games.
'So to me it's not a death sentence if you don't win the first two.'
But, he added, 'I would love to try the deal through the winners' bracket one time just to see how it feels.'
For that matter, the previous time LSU was in the finals, under Paul Mainieri in 2017, the Tigers lost the second game and came to beat No.1 seed Oregon State twice.
There could be complications. Baseball is screwy like that, where the best teams don't always win.
But it's the tried and true path. And neither LSU or Arkansas would like to be in the pickle of having to beat the other guy two in a row.
Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics for the Lake Charles American Press. You can contact him at shobbs@americanpress.com
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