SCOTT JACOBS

This is the stone cold truth:

College baseball is a blip in our national sports landscape and in the conscience of most sports fans.  That doesn’t mean the games aren’t interesting or that the play is sub-par (it isn’t).  It just means that the love affair our country has with college football and college hoops just hasn’t quite developed with college baseball.

While Omaha, Nebraska represents the quaintness and allure of college baseball, even the long history behind the College World Series is still offset by the general lack of interest in it.  The NCAA Basketball Tournament is the biggest tournament in college sports and it’s popularity has soared through the roof over the last few decades.  The BCS — love it, hate it, wish your team was in it more — gets more attention for college football than most sports could ever dream of.  But college baseball doesn’t have big TV contracts.  It’s more of a local treasure — treasured by fans of schools, but not pertinent enough to ignite national interest.

This year, the first at the new TD Ameritrade Park, we got handed an all SEC Championship of South Carolina and Florida.  That is a regional matchup.  The reality is that people in Oregon don’t care what happens in that series.  College football and basketball has star power to drive it beyond it’s regional intimacy. It has full-core, extremely intimate analysis all season long and whether you’re a casual fan or a die hard, usually you know who the best teams that year are.

But in college baseball, ask your casual sports fan who was number 1 entering the baseball tournament and more than likely you’ll be faced with a shrug. Or a look of indifference. The answer was Virginia by the way.

There is nothing wrong with college baseball. Let me be adamant about that. I’ve been to games and they’re always a fun experience. The Animals at Florida State’s Dick Howser Stadium are some of the rowdiest fans you’ll ever meet and they’re entertainingly family friendly at the same time.  College baseball produces good players, some who go to the majors and become great.  College baseball fans are a niche audience. There are so many games that it’s not an ‘experience’ at most parks to watch a game like say a college football game or even college basketball.

That doesn’t make it bad. It just makes it different.  College football is a major business. College hoops is a big deal too.  Lost in the shuffle is college baseball which far too often goes unnoticed.

I’ve watched college baseball for years.  I remember when Arizona State and USC played in the title game back in 1998, and the two teams combined to score a whopping 35 runs (USC won 21-14).  I saw Fresno State shock the world by beating Georgia in 2008. I remember when there was a winner take all national championship game and it was played on CBS.  I used to look forward to the double elimination tournament, which resulted in quirky situations.

But since the tourney got prepackaged for ESPN, I just haven’t been as interested.  The allure of a winner take all national championship on Saturday afternoon is much more befitting in my humble opinion than a best of 3 series nestled in the middle of  a bunch of MLB games during the week. I personally think the move to prime time was a bad decision by college baseball, and took away from the quaint afternoon feel that Omaha seems to go for.

But ask your buddies. Tell them to ask their friends: “hey did you watch the College World series this year?”

I get that comparing it to college football and college basketball is rather unfair, but in the college sports pecking order, 9 miles behind in national interest is baseball, and I guess, after all these years, it’s still amazing to me that America’s “national past-time” just doesn’t generate that much national buzz in the college ranks.

California nearly lost it’s baseball team and only then did college baseball become a national story this year. Fortunately they didn’t and the Golden Bears made it all the way to the College World Series, and nearly pulled off the story of the year. They came up short.  College baseball clearly suffers because it is mostly a warm weather sport.  It’s no coincidence that the majority of teams who have won titles (and they’ve done so in clumps) are all from notoriously warm states:

Arizona (3)
Arizona State (5)
California (2)
Cal-State Fulleteron (4)
LSU (6)
Miami, FL (4)
Oklahoma (2)
USC (12)
Stanford (2)
Texas (6)

There are exceptions: Michigan (2) and  Minnesota (3) have 5 titles between them, but the last of those came in 1964.  Oregon State (2) won back to back in 2006-07, and the Gamecocks just completed their second straight World Series title.  But the numbers don’t lie, and it’s clear that there’s much more interest and usually financial backing for teams who play in baseball made climates.  Arizona, California, Texas, those are the states that historically have dominated this tourney.

The funny thing about college baseball is that it should have star power to fall back on. They do what college hoops could only dream of: namely, if you don’t apply for the MLB Draft after high school, you must go to school for 3 years before you can turn pro. Baseball has continuity.  But like the sport itself its no coincidence that the college baseball draft is the least heralded of the Big three. Mainly because despite the longevity, no one knows who most of these guys are.

College baseball doesn’t have to be something it’s not. There are plenty of fans who embrace it and love it and make it great.  But there’s just not enough national interest to make it mainstream enough to matter in a crowded sports world. It’s a shame, but it’s also the reality.

Seriously, Transformers 3 got more coverage in the Gainesville Sun then UF, which came 2 wins short of a championship.

Photo: Getty

Popularity: 3% [?]