The SEC Forum at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

We're 6th in all-time CWS appearances.  If we make another one before USC, Ok. St., Arizona or Stanford get 1 or 2 more, we'll move into the Top 5 list.  Two more appearances for Top 4.  We'd need 5 more appearances to move to #2 to tie with Miami (and of course Miami would have to not gain more).  Texas is so laughably ahead of the rest of the field that if we ever did get #1, it won't be in my lifetime. 

In the 40 years since our first appearance, we've gone 20 times, averaging every other year.  Or--removing Smoke Laval's years--an actual bum--even better than that for the other years.  Obviously you can't cherry pick the worst years out, but 1) I like to imagine a world where Smoke wasn't our coach, and 2) it's interesting to note that even with a guy who didn't make Omaha much, the % of appearances is still so high across a time-span that includes him. 

The CWS began in 1947, and in that 79 years, Texas has 39 appearances, ~half the time there's been a CWS.  That includes a remarkable 7 appearances in both the 60's and then again in the 80's. 

There's no question LSU is the most accomplished program of the last 40 years.  But there's also no question that the total span of history is dominated by Texas, to the point where they would have to fall of the map for literally multiple decades, while one of the other closest teams continued to roll (it can't just be any team).  Actually, it could really only be USC, and to a lesser extent, Ok. St., 'Zona and 'Furd.  The others with a ballpark number of appearances to that first group, like FSU, Miami, and ASU, started so much later than Texas that they wind up falling into the same bucket as LSU.....great history, but nowhere near as early as Texas.

Depending on how much one weights titles, that will affect how much you offset the difference in number of CWS appearances between USC and Texas.  Texas has 18 more CWS appearances than USC.  But USC's staggering 12 titles.....damn.  They won the whole thing more than half the years they made it.  For comparison, LSU's .638 win% in the CWS is amazing.  And it's still dwarfed by USC's incredible .740 win%.  That's insane. 

Miami, who didn't make the CWS until 1974 and is second behind Texas with 25 appearances, has 4 titles to show for it.  FSU, who is in third place with 24 appearances and has been going since the 1950's, has 0 titles.  Lolz. 

I wonder where A&M appears on that list?  I know we've been around 4-5 times in the last 20-30 years, but didn't have a single CWS win until "our previous coach" almost won the whole thing 2 years ago, and most likely would have won the whole thing if he didn't already have another job lined up and his mind elsewhere. 

I'm not even certain we never had a single win, I just know we had very few wins until very recently.  I think we went once in the 70's, once in the early 90's, '99, and a couple of times more this century. 

I think I saw some graphic yesterday that Texas was averaging like 14 runs per game across the NCAA playoffs.

They managed 1 run on UGA in 18 innings.