Beyond the White and Gold

In recent years, the NCAA has tried to make changes in the format of the NCAA tournament and College World Series for the benefit of the collegiate baseball postseason. Most of the changes have been successful, but some might need to be expanded upon.

Up until six years ago, the NCAA tournament featured eight Regional tournaments followed by the winners going to Omaha to compete in the College World Series. The NCAA made an incredibly smart move by breaking up the regional tournaments into 16 four-team tournaments and pairing them up to allow for a Super Regional to occur. The Regional remained double elimination, and the Super Regional was the best two out of three.

To improve upon this even more, it would be nice to have three rounds of best of three series. Yes, it will drag out the season another week, but the competitive atmosphere around the events will grow. This would also help to spread the game in other parts of the country, and to help some of the teams that wouldn’t get any national exposure a bit of publicity.

Baseball is a game where any team can close on any day, and this adjustment would make it so that a team that loses on the first day isn’t almost certainly eliminated.

This past season was the first that the College World Series was broken up like each of the Regional was. The winner of each double elimination bracket faces off in the Championship Series. This improved system helps teams that win early, but it doesn’t spell disaster for the teams that lose on the first day of play. It has never been impossible for team’s to come out of the losers bracket as 10 out of the previous 32 finalists have come out of the loser’s bracket.

Another change that is under review by the NCAA is to push back the College World Series into the middle of July instead of at the end of June. The season won’t be extended, but instead of it starting in early February, it will start in early March. This change might be good for the game, but from a student perspective this will mean that students are able to see far fewer games each year. Currently, the season ends about a month after finals.

With the new changes, the average college student will only be able to see two months of baseball instead of following team for most of the regular season, but it would help those of us that decide to subject ourselves to the summer semester. The later start will also make for better baseball in the northern parts of the country that are still experiencing snow in February and into March.

The College World Series this year is in Omaha, Nebraska, where it’s been played since 1950, with the final championship-series game on either Sunday, June 27 or Monday, June 28.