The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox.
Good morning! The Oscar for opening your inbox on a Monday goes to you.
Things You Need to See: Top seed comes down to a coin toss
South Carolina women’s basketball will have the No. 1 overall seed in the SEC Tournament thanks to a coin toss victory over No. 6 Texas after the teams ended the regular season in a tie.
The coin toss was only third on the list of tiebreak criteria. Thus, we were treated to a riveting 27 seconds of television during halftime of yesterday’s LSU-Ole Miss game.
Gamecocks win the coin toss!@GamecockWBB will be the No. 1 seed in the SEC women’s tournament 🤙 pic.twitter.com/ouJD6hkmVP
— SEC Network (@SECNetwork) March 2, 2025
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey’s custom coin was a nice touch.
Other sports use a coin toss to determine seeding, but it’s further down the list of criteria. In the NFL, for example, it’s the 12th option in the procedure for divisional ties ahead of the playoffs; the NBA and WNBA also have several other criteria. So this brings us to our next Pulse Poll: Should sports be quicker to put seeding to a coin toss?
Trending Up: Five players whose stock rose in Indy
Jacob…