There was the Siege of Constantinople in 717. There was the Philadelphia Election Riot bar brawls of 1742. There was the National Wrestling Alliance Bunkhouse Stampede of 1988.

And now, we have the SEC baseball tournament of 2025.

After three decades of allowing a limited number of teams to take the field in Hoover, Alabama, this year’s overhauled SEC bracket will be bursting at its baseball seams. For the first time in the tournament’s nearly 50-year history, all 16 members of the conference will participate and the full bracket will be single elimination, with four teams receiving a bye and another four receiving a double bye.

In overwritten metaphorical terms, it’s a very crowded high wire that has been strung over Hoover Metropolitan Stadium with no safety net. But for the last team still hanging on after five days and 15 games played, there will be plenty of big time, big top, hardball glory.

The field that begins play Tuesday morning includes the nation’s top two teams (LSU and Texas), three of the top five (No. 5 Arkansas), six of the top 10 (Nos. 8-10, Auburn, Vanderbilt, Georgia), 10 of the top 25 (Florida, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Alabama), the past five Men’s College World Series champions and also four of the past five runners-up. A whopping eight of Kiley McDaniel’s top 30 MLB first-year draft prospects will be in Hoover this week, as well as eight of the just-announced 25-player list of semifinalists for the Golden Spikes Award. At the close of the regular season, our friends at D1Baseball.com projected that the SEC would send a record 13 teams to the NCAA tournament — 13 of 16 teams.

How stacked is this deck? The defending SEC and MCWS champion is in this field … as the No. 8 seed.

“It is no coincidence that all of these champions in Omaha have come from the SEC because honestly, by the time we get the NCAA tournament, we’ve all already been through a wringer that in a lot of ways is tougher,” said Tennessee’s Tony Vitello, the coach of that reigning champ. “There isn’t much you’re going to see in June, no matter where you play, that you haven’t been prepared for by the roller coaster of the SEC, in Hoover or in all the games leading up to it.”

The man knows of what he speaks. The Volunteers started conference play 11-4 but finished the regular season by losing their final five SEC weekend series. Perhaps they can find some Big Orange solace in the fact that the car of their amusement park ride was extremely crowded.

Texas opened its conference season 19-2, tied for the best record after 21 games in SEC history … and then dropped six of its last nine conference games. Whee!

Mississippi State was 7-14 in SEC play on April 28 when it fired head coach Chris Lemonis, the man who led the Bulldogs to their legendary MCWS title in 2021. Since the change, they have posted a record of 9-1, eight of those being conference wins. Whee!

Arkansas started 11-1 in SEC play and then lost three straight series … and then went 6-3 against ranked opponents to close out the regular season. Woo!

The team that Tennessee defeated to win in Omaha last summer was Texas A&M. The Aggies entered 2025 as the preseason No. 1 team, despite shockingly losing head coach Jim Schlossnagle to archrival Texas as soon as last year’s MCWS was done. But the Aggies tumbled from that top spot after losing nine of their first 10 SEC games … then won seven out of their next nine, including series wins over then-No. 1 Tennessee and then-No. 2 Arkansas … then ended the regular season being swept by Missouri, the conference’s last-place team and the Tigers’ only three SEC wins all season. Now, they come to Hoover desperately hanging onto hopes of winning their way onto an NCAA tournament selection bubble.

“I think that’s the scariest part of the SEC tournament is that you could make a case for every team in it being dangerous, from the No. 1 team in the nation to the team at the bottom of the conference standings,” said Mike Bianco, a former LSU champion player and Ole Miss head coach since 2000. “Every team, all 16, have shown you at some point that they can beat you in one game. And that’s all it takes now. Single elimination. You don’t have to dig deep to find something that scares you.”

For example, that Mizzou team that swept the Aggies two weekends ago to shove them off of that bubble. Or South Carolina, a promising team that fell apart in May, being led by Paul Mainieri, who once led LSU to Omaha glory. Or, Kentucky, which made its first trip to Omaha a year ago and is bouncing atop a Big Blue bubble with an SEC record of 13-17 but a national strength of schedule ranking of ninth.

Or, yes, Ole Miss itself.

The Rebels are the only SEC program that was able to trot out the same weekend rotation all season. Hunter Elliott, Riley Maddox and Mason Nichols started 14 games each in as many 2025 weekends. In this current era of college sports that is dominated by transfers, the Ole Miss dogpile in 2022 feels as if it were a decade ago. But guess who were all three key members of the pitching lineup that helped lead the Rebels to that MCWS title? Hunter Elliott, Riley Maddox and Mason Nichols.

“Everyone is dangerous for a varying list of reasons,” Vanderbilt head coach Tim Corbin, a two-time MCWS champion, said last month, his Commodores having just lost two of three to that same Ole Miss team. “We lost a series to Auburn in March, the team that finished last in the conference one year ago and are certainly not that team again. We had to fight our way through Georgia, a team that is hitting home runs like they are the 1927 Yankees. There are no weekends off and in Hoover there are no games off.”

But there’s a pretty good chance there will be walk-offs. Vandy ended three of its last four regular-season home games via walk-off homers. It has done that five times this season, tied for tops in the SEC with … Georgia.

Whee! Indeed.

“Is it fun? The SEC tournament? Yeah, it’s fun,” LSU head coach Jay Johnson acknowledged. His Tigers are seeking their 10th tournament title but first since 2017. Johnson knows all about danger lurking from the lower reaches of the SEC bracket. In 2023, his team made it to the title game after arriving in Hoover as the No. 11 seed in a 12-team field. “But it’s also stressful. Your brain doesn’t stop. It can’t.”

And that makes Hoover’s newly expanded pressure cooker the perfect warmup to get ready for the even bigger bracket that begins next week.