CBSSports.com: South Carolina athletics ranked tops in the SEC

CBSSports.com created a fun little thing called The Best In College Sports Award, ranking collegiate athletic programs based on their success in various sports. The award considers football, men's and women's hoops, baseball, and one wildcard sport. The system assigns increased value to sports with broader fanbases—a football national title yields 300 points whereas a women's basketball title yields 100. The wildcard sport depends on the school, with the system doling out points to whichever "other" sport performed the best.

South Carolina has experienced success in football, women's hoops, and baseball in recent years, which has been a source of pride for fans and has garnered the school increased national attention. So while it shouldn't surprise you that the Gamecocks did well, would you believe they topped the SEC? Indeed, South Carolina edged LSU by a mere half point to claim the conference's top spot and 8th overall position.

It's somewhat surprising that no SEC school finished higher than 8th, but men's basketball proved to be a real liability. Florida, which ranked 21st overall, was the first SEC school that received any substantial amount of points in the hoops department. But that fat-ass goose egg in the football column plummeted the Gators to 21st overall. Similarly, it was South Carolina's zero points for basketball that served as the resume blemish (although an NIT/CBI invitation would have merely tied us for 7th.) The Gamecocks received 50 points in the wildcard column—any guesses as to which program was responsible for those? Equestrian, perhaps?

Stanford won the whole thing, followed by Michigan State, Louisville, Florida State and Baylor. Since you're all wondering, Clemson was 30th, good for 5th in the ACC (including then-member Maryland and not including now-member Louisville.) Miami of Ohio, FIU, Nevada and Temple tied for dead last with no points. If you're curious about the math that went into this, that link above will take you to the full school list and explanation of the points system.

Anyway, this doesn't mean much and the tallying system is unscientific at best, but it certainly isn't a bad thing for a major sports outlet to consider your program the best in its conference.