As teams traveled early this week to Oklahoma City for the NCAA Women’s College World Series that gets under way today, Michael Lotief remained in Lafayette.

And he was singing.

Singing the mid-major blues, that is.

"I think nationally the softball world understands how special softball here is in Louisiana and Cajun country," the co-head coach of UL’s softball team said when asked, essentially, if he thought the Ragin’ Cajuns, who drew more than 2,400 to Lamson Park for each of the Regional round postseason games they hosted earlier this month, had sent a message to the NCAA that they deserve to be taken more seriously when it comes to issue like national-tournament seeding.

But Lotief, whose Cajuns were seeded No. 14 despite being ranked in the top 10 of multiple national polls for much of the season, did not stop there.

Rather, he railed on a system that he perceives to favor teams from certain conferences over others.

"I don’t know how to say this and be, like, politically correct," Lotief said. "But, when you watch the stuff on TV, there’s a bias. There’s an SEC bias.

"I mean, you just hear that — over and over and over. SEC. Pac-12. Big 12. There’s a bias. And when they’re coordinating these events, and that’s the way they’re packaging it to their audience — that filters into everybody’s brain."

There is no arguing that the Pac-12 has produced every College World Series softball champion since 2006 — Arizona twice, Arizona State twice, Washington and UCLA.

Or that the SEC is well-represented this year, with four seeded teams and three — Alabama, Tennessee and LSU — that made it to the WCWS.

But Lotief sees NCAA softball — whose eight Super Regionals, including the best-of-three series that the Cajuns lost at defending national champion and No. 3 Arizona State last week, were all televised live this year on ESPN’s many networks — headed into the same world of major college football, and he doesn’t like it.

A world, that is, where the playing field is not level for all — and power conferences, because quality teams are so frequently facing each other, seem to have a built-in advantage when he comes to seeding, and ultimately respect, over ones like that to which UL belongs, the Sun Belt Conference, and other lesser leagues.

"I’ve been around softball for, going on, 20-something years," Lotief said. "And this is my plea to our Coaches Association: for all those years, we despised what was going on in football. "» They despised the way it all went to the big schools. They all came out and spoke against how ‘the haves’ had it, and the other ones were just forgotten.

"And now that we’ve got the money, and the stage, we’ve become just like them. We’re not true to our principles. Not true to what we fought for."

That plea, then:

"Just because now you have the power, the clout — don’t turn on your own," Lotief said. "It’s still about doing the right thing. Being fair. Making sure that everybody has equal opportunity and equal chance.

"That’s what I believe."

Of the 13 teams seeded higher than UL this year, all 13 represented so-called power conferences: No. 1 Cal of the Pac-12, No. 2 Alabama of the SEC, No. 3 Arizona State (Pac-12), No. 4 Oklahoma (Big 12), No. 5 Florida (SEC), No. 6 Texas (Big 12), No. 7 Tennessee (SEC), No. 8 Texas A&M (Big 12), No. 9 Missouri (Big 12), No. 10 Georgia (SEC), Nos. 11-13 Oregon, UCLA and Arizona (all Pac-12).

Of the eight that made it to the WCWS, six were seeded: No. 1 Cal, No. 2 Alabama, No. 3 Arizona State, No 4 Oklahoma, No. 7 Tennessee and No. 11 Oregon.

And of the two that advanced despite not being seeded, one, LSU, which opens this afternoon against Cal, is from the SEC, and the other, South Florida, plays out of the Big East.

As for UL, the Cajuns didn’t win the Sun Belt postseason tournament.

But they did go 12-0 in regular-season, non-conference games against regional qualifiers Arizona State, Boston University, Georgia Tech (2-0), Hofstra, Houston (2-0), Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi State, Mississippi Valley State and Northwestern, and Lotief obviously does not feel the 53-6 Cajuns were seeded nearly as highly as they should have been.

"After watching some of the (other) Super Regionals," he said, "I really, really believe that the polls had it right — that we’re about six-through-seven, somewhere in there.

"I really believe, at the bottom of my heart, that we’re one of the best teams in the country."