re: Mullen has a hell of a rebuild on his hands

Eh I would say baseball is a bit closer than the East/west argument in football as far as in conference play goes.

going back to 1985 here is the breakdown of outright conference champs(this is the year it started to get close-before this the west absolutely dominated)

Both the East and west have split 13-13 with several ties in overall record.

So in SEC play which should be used when discussing conference play its been a pretty even split.

The east has some solid teams with Vandy, USC, and UF. Kentucky has had a good year here and there sprinkled in.

The west has LSU, State, OM, TAMU, and Arkansas all of which have been top 10 teams at some point in the past 7-10 years.

East has a few more NCs but the West has been just as competitive in SEC play and had a very similar number of WS appearances(just weren't able to bring the hardware home as often).

The west has had 5 teams make CWS appearances in the last 5 years whereas the east has only had 2 CWS appearances in that same time frame.