The Women’s College World Series is the headliner on Oklahoma City’s softball calendar.
We have a pretty good warm-up act, too.
The Big 12 tournament jams hard a few weeks before the WCWS comes to town and rocks our socks off. Even though the Big 12 isn’t the main event, it draws thousands of fans to USA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium and reminds us of the fun that’s just around the corner.
But what if we had two warm-up acts?
After next season, OU will be moving to the SEC, and even though the league has been playing its conference softball tournament at on-campus stadiums for two decades, it has never had a venue like Hall of Fame Stadium in the SEC footprint.
“We could conceivably do two from our standpoint, from a staffing standpoint, from a playability standpoint,” USA Softball chief executive officer Craig Cress said of Hall of Fame Stadium hosting more than one conference tournament.
“Yeah, we could do it.”
So, it’s possible.
But is it realistic?
As the Big 12 tournament concludes its run this weekend, the event clearly has a foothold in the city. There is history. There is affiliation. There is also a contract through 2025. If USA Softball allowed it, the Big 12 would seek a longer-term deal.
All of that means the Big 12 has pretty much locked down the first full week of May.
If the SEC wanted to play its softball tournament in OKC, it would have to make concessions. On the flip side, though, there could be some big benefits for the league’s teams and the conference’s coffers.
Would the SEC be interested in a change?
An SEC spokesman said the league believes its current format works well and isn't looking to make a change, much less push another league from a venue. But the spokesman also said the SEC is always evaluating sites and exploring ways to provide the best championship experience.
So, you’re telling me there’s a chance.
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‘The best softball facilities … are on our campuses’
The SEC rotates its softball tournament among campus sites. Last year, the event was held at Alabama. This year, it’s at Arkansas. Next year, it heads to Georgia, then Auburn, Kentucky, LSU, Missouri and Ole Miss.
But the conference didn’t always have an on-campus rotation.
The SEC held its first seven conference softball tournaments at neutral sites. Columbus, Georgia, where softball was played during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, hosted the first four. Then it moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, for two years and Plant City, Florida, for one.
The crowds weren’t great at any of the locations, and they often looked smaller because of the stadiums. Plant City’s capacity is 6,700, Columbus’s 5,000 and Chattanooga’s 3,000.
The atmosphere suffered.
That changed when the SEC moved the tournament to smaller on-campus stadiums in 2004.
“The best softball facilities in America, I think, are on our campuses,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey told the Tuscaloosa (Alabama) News last month.
Hold up there, Commish. No doubt the SEC has some great on-campus venues – since the conference didn’t start playing softball until the late 1990s, all of the stadiums are fairly new and modern – but no softball facility in the United States is better than Hall of Fame Stadium.
“There aren’t just a lot of facilities, outside that one, that rise to the level of what’s on our campuses,” Sankey acknowledged.
But …
“The Oklahoma City facility is a much, much larger place,” Sankey said.
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Maybe the SEC sees that as a bad thing after its earlier experience. Hall of Fame Stadium’s capacity was expanded to 9,000 when the upper deck opened two years ago, and even though the SEC has the biggest on-campus stadium in all of college softball – Alabama’s Rhodes Stadium – it isn’t even half as big Hall of Fame Stadium.
Rhodes’ capacity: 3,940.
But here’s the thing, SEC softball has come a long ways since its early days. Two of its programs, Florida and Alabama, have won national titles, and eight of its 13 teams are currently ranked in the top 25.
Fanbases are bigger.
Passions are stronger.
Playing the conference tournament at a neutral site today would be different than it was back when the league first started, and playing it at Hall of Fame Stadium with the Sooners coming into the league would guarantee a big gate for the SEC. Even though the league isn’t hurting for money, no one is college athletics is turning down increased cash flow.
Additionally, when OU and Texas join the fold, six of the SEC’s 15 softball programs will be west of the Mississippi River. Putting championship events in this quadrant will be increasingly important, and softball is a natural fit.
Will the SEC give OKC a look for softball, then?
Here’s guessing, yes, but making a move to Hall of Fame Stadium will require concessions by the SEC because the Big 12 isn’t going anywhere.
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‘We want to be here long term’
Listen to Dayna Scherf, Big 12 vice president for competition, and you’ll hear pride about the long-standing association between Big 12 softball and Oklahoma City. Even though the league didn’t hold a conference softball tournament from 2011-16, it has never been held anywhere other than Hall of Fame Stadium.
No other sport in the league has a tournament home like this.
“It’s worked out great for us,” Scherf said. “It’s very centrally located.
“I feel like we’ve kind of grown up together.”
And the Big 12 is about to grow again. Three of the schools set to join later this summer play softball ― BYU, Houston and UCF ― but even with more teams, the league plans to continue with a single-elimination tournament.
“Next year, we’ll have 10, so we’ll go to four days,” Scherf said, “but it’s pretty easy to do if you’re set on the format.”
Easy to do, too, when you have a good relationship with your host.
Even when Hall of Fame Stadium was in the midst of expansion ― the upper deck was being added during the spring of 2019 ― the Big 12 and USA Softball made things work. That was when Cress really got a sense of how symbiotic the relationship had become.
“We went through some pains that year,” the USA Softball CEO said. “But they made it clear they wanted to be here, so to me, that was a huge commitment on their part.”
The Big 12 likes having softball in Oklahoma City so much that if USA Softball did long-term contracts ― it limits the length to avoid getting burned by inflation ― the league would try to strike one.
“We want to be here long term,” Scherf said, adding that the league even would be interested in something as long as 10 years.
(By the way, the reason the NCAA has a contract for the Women’s College World Series that runs through 2035 is because that deal is between the NCAA and The City of Oklahoma City, not USA Softball.)
Safe to say, Big 12 softball is locked in at Hall of Fame Stadium. The league is likely to keep rolling from one two- or three-year deal to another.
That means the options for having the SEC softball tournament in OKC are limited.
But they aren’t zero.
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‘Anything’s doable’
Option No. 1 would be moving up the SEC softball tournament a week.
It’s not like conference tournaments have never been pushed around the calendar. The SEC is one of several leagues that now hold their women’s basketball tournaments a week before their men’s basketball tournaments. The women finish early, then have downtime to recover and prepare for the NCAA Tournament.
If the SEC moved softball up a week but didn’t want teams sitting idle the next week, it could stage a rivalry week. Play OU-Texas then. Or OU-Alabama and Texas-Texas A&M. Ole Miss-Mississippi State. Georgia-Florida. Alabama-Auburn. Tennessee-LSU. Even though the league would already have determined an automatic qualifier through the tournament, matchups like that would still matter. For bragging rights, sure. But for NCAA seedings, too.
Don’t want to move up the tournament?
Option No. 2 would be to play early-round games at Hall of Fame Stadium, then have the remainder of the tournament at OU.
Of course, once the Sooners get into the SEC, they’ll be added to the rotation of on-campus sites. Maybe their year is a hybrid. Start at Hall of Fame Stadium. Vacate for the Big 12. Finish at OU.
Or the title game could be back at Hall of Fame.
You could have the Big 12 title game on Saturday, the SEC game on Sunday. (Even though the NCAA prefers all automatic qualifiers be determined by Saturday, title games can start no later than noon local time on Sunday.)
Or do something super cool on Saturday, and play one title game at noon, the other at 7 p.m.
You suppose fans might be interested in that? Or ESPN?
What day for softball that would be.
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Such a thing would require cooperation by the conferences. How would they share spaces behind the scenes? When would they change signage around the stadium? What happens if there’s a weather delay?
Still, coaches like to have their teams play at Hall of Fame Stadium. If they make the WCWS, it’s an advantage to have played in the stadium already. That could be a motivation for the SEC to strike some sort of deal.
It would be super cool to have a second conference softball tournament in Oklahoma City.
Frankly, I wasn’t even sure such a thing was feasible. Would it stretch the USA Softball staff too thin? Would it stress the Hall of Fame Stadium field too much? Would it be able to fit on the calendar?
“Anything’s doable from that standpoint,” said Cress, the USA Softball CEO.
Still …
“The SEC is pretty locked in,” Cress said, “and I think they’re having a lot of success by playing on their campuses.”
Sigh.
Maybe having the Big 12 and SEC softball tournaments at Hall of Fame Stadium is a pipe dream. Maybe the SEC won’t change its current setup. Maybe the Big 12 will remain the only show in town.
One good warm-up act for the WCWS is better than none.
But man, would two be fun.
Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at 405-475-4125 or jcarlson@oklahoman.com. Like her at facebook.com/JenniCarlsonOK, follow her at twitter.com/jennicarlson_ok, and support her work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
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