Could the state of Florida host three super regionals for the first time ever?

The state of Florida has always been relevant in the super regional stage of the NCAA Baseball postseason tournament, playing host to at least one site in every year but one, and hosting two super regionals in the same season seven times since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1999. However, The Sunshine State has never hosted three super regionals in the same season.

More than halfway through the 2016 college baseball season, Florida, Florida State and Miami are among the elite at the top of the polls with all three ranked in the top-6 of every major outlet rankings. D1 baseball, in its recent midseason projections, has Florida, Miami and Florida State as the top national seeds, in that order. Left in its 2016 campaign, Florida has six games remaining against teams currently ranked: Vanderbilt and LSU. Florida State also has two ranked series remaining as it will travel to Clemson and then play host to Miami in the season finale, the only scheduled games for the Hurricanes against a ranked team.

Of the 22 combined times these teams have been a national seed, only five of them have made the College World Series finals with Miami the only team to win the whole thing in 1999 over FSU and again in 2001. Despite not making it all the way, these three teams as national seeds have gotten to Omaha 14 of the 22 times. Florida State has not had as much success as the others though, only making it to Omaha four out of 10 times as a national seed.

However, would the NCAA choose three cities in Florida to host super regional tournaments? This is especially crucial in 2016 with a powerhouse of teams located in the southeast. Currently according to D1 Baseball, the top six teams in the country all play east of the Mississippi River and the northern most being South Carolina. If the NCAA wants to broaden the popularity and showcase the game, hosting six of the eight biggest tournaments of the year all within an eight hour drive would not accomplish that. They have shown that they aren't completely fixated on the idea of super regionals all across the country as in 2011, Texas was the most western national seed with the most northern being Virginia.

In 1998, before national seeds existed, Florida, Miami and Florida State were the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 seeds respectively in the College World Series and would have been national seeds had that distinction existed. It didn't work out close to how anyone thought as #1 Florida and #3 FSU were eliminated following losing in their first two games. Miami was able to escape the first round with a win, but went on to lose two straight games en route to elimination.

To sum it all up, should the trio of Florida baseball teams continue to play themselves into a national seed, it will be interesting to see if the NCAA chooses all three as such. In 2001, for the first and only other instance, California hosted three super regional tournaments in Stanford, Cal State Fullerton and Southern California. Just as the case with the three Florida teams in 1998, none of the three made it to the championship game. Getting a national seed is just one of the steps on the road to Omaha.