Road to Omaha thread

Yeah, even back in the 1990s when I was a baseball SID at a pretty good program, things had started to change. Playing NCAA ball for 2-3 years now is probably a better gig than the low level minor leagues.

 

So many ways that can go haywire. Lafayette really pounds the ball and Mississippi State just ain't the same team they were a year ago. I think that's the first obstacle to what would be an epic rematch.

 

]
So is it fair to say that Maryland baseball has sucked the settled water of the lowest of basemen floors for four decades?

 

It's pretty sad, but college baseball in the Northeast, at least down to the Virginias, has about the same broad appeal as college lacrosse does in Idaho.

 

The trouble with college baseball up this way is twofold. One, the problem with all college sports here, too many colleges. The fan pie is divvied into teeny tiny pieces. Two, and much more serious, it's no fun to watch (or play) baseball games here in April and most of May. It's 47 and drizzling outside my house right now and they've already drawn for the College World Series.

 

Yes, March is a miserable month for college baseball in the Northeast. They've got to get the games in, and it seems like they're all played at 40 degrees.

 

That's a big reason why the NCAA has tried to put regionals in non-traditional spots (like UConn and Michigan in recent years), in hopes of drumming up interest outside of the traditional hotbeds. They tried everything they could to give Washington a regional but it would have been too tough to justify from an RPI standpoint. First time since '04 that there's only been two regionals west of the Rockies.

 

See also: MLB holding opening day in Tokyo and Australia. I wonder why the NCAA doesn't embrace the game's strength in the SEC, Pac-12, Big West, ect., instead of propping up the weak spots?

 

Go Lions! Ivy league as a THREE seed. Baby!

 

Very true. I worked as a SID at a smaller school in the south. Our season would start before the Super Bowl (hated that) and we'd have a month or more of basketball/baseball overlap, which sucked.

Our biggest tournaments came in February and early March when we'd get a bunch of northeast and Midwest teams to come in and play. Unfortunately, by April we had played 3/4 of our games allotment, so after working 60-70-hour weeks for a couple of months, I'd sit in the office on a Tuesday afternoon and think "Gee, this would be a nice day to sit out at the ballpark and watch a game."

It's a real issue for the northern schools and I'm sure it probably hurts recruiting as well. Not sure if there's a satisfactory answer.

 

New England's most nationally competitive baseball schools are in Division III, where kids go either to stay local or for reasons other than sports.

 

It's interesting that there hasn't been one or two schools emerge as the popular teams in New England. Boston College is really the only one with a major football program, it's kind of surprising people who went to Northeastern or whatever don't identify as a fan of a bigger school too. In Virginia, for instance, it seems like most of the people who go to JMU or Norfolk State or wherever pick a side in the UVa-VT battle. Is it different in New England because there are real rivalries in hockey among all the schools?

College baseball in New York isn't terrible. There are no powerhouses, but St. John's has had its moments. Stony Brook made the CWS a couple years ago and, as somebody mentioned, even Columbia got in as a 3 seed from the Ivy this year.