College Baseball

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Published: August 17, 2006

College baseball has been played ever since college students learned the game of baseball in the late 1800's, but only in the last 60 years has the game slowly turned into the third most popular college sport in the country, behind football and basketball. Baseball at the college level has turned into the most exciting form of baseball to watch and reminds viewers around the world that high quality and fun baseball can be played without the players making millions of dollars.

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style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In college baseball, there are a few glaring differences that separate it from professional baseball. College baseball players use aluminum bats instead of wood bats and the designated hitter is used permanently. Also, in college baseball, the second game of all double-headers are only 7 inning games. College baseball also has an incredible amount of teams playing at the highest level. There are 283 teams sprawled out into 30 conferences along with 10 independent teams in the NCAA – Division I.

The college baseball season is the longest of all college sports. Much like professional baseball, the teams play about 50 games during the regular season with the possibility of hitting the 60's if they reach the post season. The regular season generally starts in late January or early February and ends in late May. After the regular season concludes, the nation's 64 best teams advance to the Regionals. From the 64 teams, there are 16 four-team, double-elimination regionals. Regional winners advance to 8 head-to-head best-of-three super regionals, and super regional winners advance to the College World Series.

The College World Series is held every June in Omaha, Nebraska. It is an eight-team, double elimination tournament. However, the final two teams remaining play a best-of-three series to determine the champion. In 2005, the Texas Longhorns were crowned the champions after taking the best-of-three final series from Florida.

Along with Division I, college baseball is played at the Division II and Division III levels as well as the NAIA. In 2005, Florida Southern won the D-II National Championship beating North Florida. In D-III, Wisconsin-Whitewater beat Cortland St. to win the title. In the NAIA, Oklahoma City beat Embry-Riddle for the championship.

College baseball has garnered much public success in the recent years due to the excitement of the College World Series in the last two seasons. ESPN and ABC have televised every game of the CWS for the past two years and have gotten fantastic ratings. The use of aluminum bats provides higher scoring and more excitement to the game and keeps viewers entertained throughout the entire game.

Due to the increased popularity in college baseball over the last year, EA Sports released a college baseball video game, MVP 06 NCAA Baseball. The game includes over 100 Division I teams and 19 official stadiums. The video game is viewed by many as the biggest step towards turning college baseball into a major college sport along with football and basketball.

Every year, the best player in college baseball receives the Golden Spikes award. Nebraska's Alex Gordon won the award last year and is now playing in the Kansas City Royals organization. Notable Golden Spikes winners have been Cubs pitcher Mark Prior playing for USC in 2001 and Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek playing for Georgia Tech in 1994.

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