Before Monday’s College World Series final pitting Texas A&M against Tennessee, someone asked me who I was rooting for. I didn’t have an answer for them.

I was facing what’s known as a dilemma. The Associated Press Stylebook defines dilemma as “a choice between two unattractive options.” I can’t think of anything less attractive than safety orange or slightly-more-purple maroon.

I thought for a few seconds and decided that what I was really rooting for was a 355-day weather delay. You see, I didn’t want either team to win. When it comes to fandom, unless one of my teams is playing, I don’t want any other team to win anything, ever.

To borrow a term from economics, college and professional sports are zero-sum games. Meaning, for someone to win, everyone else must lose. Your team never benefits when another team succeeds.

So what about those who support SEC teams over all others? Perhaps they somehow attended all 14 (soon to be 16) SEC schools simultaneously, or perhaps they’re confused. You’ll recognize them as they attempt to lead “S-E-C, S-E-C” chants from the stands with a straight face.

Well, they’re wrong.

Let’s use Mississippi State as an example. Beyond the local connection to Dispatch readership, MSU might actually be the best example of this phenomenon, because, for virtually every sport other than baseball, “S-E-C, S-E-C” is all Bulldog fans have to hang their hats on.

According to tax records obtained by USA Today, Mississippi State received $51.3 million from the SEC in 2023. Most of that conference revenue came from media rights and television contracts for football. Based on Nielson ratings, which are, admittedly, flawed in the era of streaming and multiple cable networks, MSU games averaged just a shade over 2 million viewers in 2023, ahead of only Arkansas in the new-look SEC. For comparison, Alabama averaged more than 6 million viewers per game while Georgia, LSU, Tennessee and Texas were all in the neighborhood of 4 million. 

Guess what? Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Tennessee all got the same $51.3 million slice of the SEC pie for doing twice the work that Mississippi State did. Do you think I’m the first one to do that math? Hardly.

The time will soon come – maybe sooner than even I think – where the conference power brokers and television executives look across the table at universities like MSU and Arkansas and ask, “What, exactly, would you say you do here?”

Do you think the SEC’s next TV contract would be substantially lower if MSU wasn’t included in the package of games the conference could offer?

Those slices get a lot bigger when there are fewer mouths to feed.

So, as I watched Monday’s thrilling final – a 6-5 Tennessee victory that featured all of the passion, inconsistency and weirdness that makes college baseball fun – I didn’t much care who won. A trophy was coming back to the SEC, and Mississippi State wasn’t getting 1/14th of it.

Barring a sudden rise to relevance in football and a consistent stay there, the best MSU fans can hope for is that no other SEC team wins anything, ever. The lower the ceiling, the higher the floor seems. When in doubt, root against your closest geographic, cultural and financial rivals at all times. It’s a zero-sum game, after all.

As for the College World Series champions, at least Tennessee had the good sense to wear black.

Philip Poe is sports editor. He can be reached at [email protected]

Philip Poe is sports editor.