For a certain period of time every year, college baseball is about as good as it gets. It can also be as bad as it gets in some instances (bat flips, screaming pitchers) but let’s set that aside for the moment.
It may not hold the year-round attention of the sports nation like the NFL or the seasonal attention of Major League Baseball, but college baseball has found its niche. What’s more, it has found a way to do the best thing possible – stay out of its own way.
Too many sports are constantly trying to re-invent themselves – international games, changing rules to appeal to a “new generation of fans” (who have the attention span of a hamster) – but college baseball has done a great job of staying in its lane.
Oh sure, NIL is a factor that has stolen some charm, and players will transfer in a heartbeat, but that’s all over the college sports landscape.
Of course, there are those who are grinding out a chilly, late February double-header against some Northern school that no one has ever heard of, but for the rest of the non-betting sports fans (if there are any left), we are now in the midst of the college baseball’s sweet spot.
The Regional round is behind us; the Super Regionals are this weekend and then comes the College World Series.
Each of the three have a certain magic.
Although the Regionals can be a monster to keep up with, it’s a six- or seven-game grind that can either be a cakewalk for a 3-0 winner or an absolute death march for a team that has to battle its way through the loser’s bracket. Where else would you have a pitcher who threw 122 pitchers the day before, then hop back on the mound in the 10th inning and take the ball with the game on the line? First three pitches: 97, 96, 96. Take that, pitch counters!
That’s what West Virginia’s Dawson Montesa did Monday night in beating Kentucky, which set off an amazing celebration that only happens in college baseball. After winning on a walk-off single to advance to the Supers, the entire Mountaineer team locked arm-in-arm in front of the sellout crowd and sang “Take Me Home Country Roads” (aka “Almost Home, West Virginia”).
Though you kinda had to see it to appreciate it, rest assured this had a little more bite to it than a college football team singing the alma mater after beating Directional State by 40.
Now we are on to the Super Regionals where it’s just the basic best-of-three. Simple as it can be, which is how it should be. Before 1999, there were these goofy six-team regionals with brackets that no one could quite figure out. Throw in some bad weather and sometimes you thought they’d never end.
Thankfully, the College World Series moved off the eight-team cluster that was even more confusing. Then came those couple of years in which there was a one-game playoff (because CBS mandated it) and a team with one loss could (and did) beat a team with no losses in the CWS and still win the title.
Now, it’s two bracket winners playing in a best-of-three for the right to dogpile by the pitcher’s mount. Simple, neat, easy to figure out.
You might take it for granted, but there’s one more thing that college baseball has done that has allowed it to keep its charm – holding the CWS in Omaha.
That might seem obvious, but with all the $$ being thrown around, it would have been easy for the powers that be to take the coin and run off to Dodger Stadium or Wrigley Field. Instead, they just built a new stadium and rightfully kept it in the same area code.
These three weeks provide the perfect setup. Let’s hope college baseball can remember to not try to fix something that’s not broken.
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com