The tournament champion earned the conference's automatic bid to the 2017 NCAA Division I baseball tournament[2][3] After a search for potential new sites, the SEC named Hoover the host for the 2017 and future events, with a specific term to be negotiated.

[4] The tournament has been held every year since 1977, with LSU claiming their twelfth championship against Arkansas, the most of any school.

Original members Georgia and Kentucky along with 1993 addition Arkansas have never won the tournament.

This is the nineteenth consecutive year and twenty-first overall that the event has been held at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium, known from 2007 through 2012 as Regions Park.

The regular season division winners claimed the top two seeds and the next ten teams by conference winning percentage, regardless of division, claimed the remaining berths in the tournament.