List of Southwestern Athletic Conference baseball champions
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| List of Southwestern Athletic Conference baseball champions | |
|---|---|
| Conference baseball championship | |
 Conference logo | |
| Sport | Baseball |
| Conference | Southwestern Athletic Conference |
| Played | 1921–1932, 1949–2019, 2021–Present |
| Last contest | 2022 |
| Current champion | Alabama State |
| Most championships | Southern, 34 |
| Winner trophy | Southwestern Athletic Conference Baseball Championship |
| Official website | https://swac.org/feature/swacbaseball2021 |
This list of Southwestern Athletic Conference baseball champions concerns the overall conference baseball championship of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I Southwestern Athletic Conference. The top four finishers in each conference division participate in a two-bracket, double-elimination tournament to determine the overall conference champion; it was most recently played in Birmingham, Alabama, between May 25 and May 29.[1] The winner of the tournament also receives an automatic berth to the NCAA tournament and, since 2019, to the HBCU World Series.[2]
Background
The SWAC was established in 1920,[3] and the conference is known to have sponsored baseball as a league sport until around the uncertain times of the Great Depression and World War II before sanctioning it again in 1949[4] (even early SWAC power Wiley College shut down its baseball program after the 1932 season, despite featuring a rising young star infielder from the Chicago area in Pat Patterson[5]). Between 1959 and 2003, only Southern, Jackson State, and Grambling State won SWAC championships. The league office itself has even been known to refer to these schools as the "Big Three."[6] However, since 2004, seven programs have won championships, suggesting greater competitiveness in the league.[6] Also, with the SWAC tournament now including eight schools,[7] simply more lower-seeded teams have an opportunity to compete for the conference crown.
Determining conference champions
Though the league championship was normally determined by the regular season conference standings, for the first three seasons after the SWAC had renewed sponsorship of baseball in 1949, a championship series was held;[8][9][10] the conference was divided into northern and southern divisions during that time period.[11] In 1977 the league returned to division play—this time with eastern and western divisions (reflecting the changes in conference membership)—with the division winners again facing off in a best-of-three championship series.[12] After the 1980 series featured a fourth consecutive JSU–SU match-up,[13][14][15] the series was successfully converted into a more inclusive four-team, double-elimination tournament for the 1981 season, guaranteeing that at least one school that had never won the SWAC title before could compete in it (the four-team field was expanded to six teams in 2000[16] and eight teams in 2008[7]).
Current status
A three-year deal was signed in 2020 to return the tournament to Smith–Wills Stadium in Jackson, Mississippi.[17] However, just two weeks after that agreement was announced, the NCAA canceled all spring championship events for the 2020 season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[18] Then, less than a month before the 2021 tournament, it was announced that it would be relocated from Jackson to Toyota Field in Madison, Alabama "due to enhanced COVID-19 protocols."[19] The 2022 tournament was split between Regions Field and Jerry D. Young Memorial Field in Birmingham.[20]
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