The Pac-12 Is Dying. What Does that Imply for College Baseball?

Lenin won’t have truly mentioned: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” But that doesn’t imply not-Lenin was mistaken. College soccer simply lived via such per week, because the Big Ten’s addition of UCLA and USC for the approaching soccer season snowballed into an all-out raid on the Pac-12. Oregon and Washington are following the 2 Los Angeles faculties to richer pastures. The Big 12, already within the technique of including 4 mid-major faculties to switch the outgoing Texas and Oklahoma, is swooping in to choose Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah from off the curb. Left with the proposition of propping up a rump four-team convention, Cal and Stanford are being courted by the ACC. Those faculties, with their sterling educational reputations, are thought of a superb cultural match for a convention that already contains Duke and Virginia; the identical may very well be mentioned about UCLA and the Big Ten.

If these establishments wish to sustain the pretense of wanting good, they’re going to must rename these conferences. An Atlantic Coast Conference with two groups in California? An 18-team Big Ten? A 16-team Big 12? People are going to begin to assume these jokers can’t depend or learn a map. But that’s of secondary significance. What this viewers desires to know, absolutely, is what this implies for faculty baseball.

It’s onerous to pin down a second earlier than convention realignment as a result of there actually isn’t one. The numerous alliances between Division I athletics departments have all the time been in movement. I grew up an avid Virginia Tech soccer fan in a time when Syracuse, West Virginia, and Miami have been the Hokies’ greatest rivals within the Big East; such a factor appears preposterous 20 years later. If you’re slightly older and slightly extra Texan than I’m, you most likely mourn the SWC. You may actually decide any start line should you needed to.

I selected 2011, the yr earlier than Texas A&M, Missouri, and Nebraska left the Big 12, which actually set the gears in movement for the revolutionary second we’re in now. In the years that adopted, Louisville joined the ACC and changed into a perennial nationwide championship contender below Dan McDonnell, and the Big Ten went from a baseball afterthought to a professional energy convention because of geographic and monetary development.

Here’s how issues stood in 2011, with the six conferences that acquired automated bids to BCS soccer bowl video games, plus the 5 non-power conferences that put a number of groups within the NCAA baseball event that yr.

Schools marked with an asterisk are non-contiguous with the remainder of the convention, which means that they’re in a state that doesn’t border the group of adjoining states that comprises the biggest variety of groups within the convention. That’s not a very large deal in 2011; the one geographical isolates within the main conferences are Boston College, UCF, and technically Georgetown. It will turn into a really large deal in years to return.

Here’s how issues stood in the course of the NCAA baseball season that simply led to June:

Over the previous 12 seasons, the foremost conferences have stayed largely steady, apart from the dissolution of the outdated Big East, which acquired picked over a lot the identical method the Pac-12 is getting parted out now. TCU and Utah acquired promoted from the mid-major ranks, and Louisville did each, becoming a member of the Big East for a number of years on its journey from Conference USA to the ACC.

As these faculties acquired promoted to the massive publicity and TV paydays of the foremost conferences, different faculties tried to scramble up the ladder as effectively, resulting in trade and consolidation between the Mountain West and the WAC, and Conference USA and the AAC (the remnant of the outdated soccer Big East). Using the multi-bid cutoff additionally highlights one other shift within the school baseball energy construction presently: the decline of the Big West.

Not too way back, California’s non-Pac 12 (or Pac-10 again within the day) faculties made up a de facto main baseball convention. Cal State-Fullerton has 4 nationwide championships, and Fullerton, UC-Irvine, and UC-Santa Barbara have been to the College World Series up to now decade; these three faculties and Long Beach State have all been out of a regional extra lately than USC has. But the locus of energy in school baseball has shifted east — southeast, actually — up to now 10 years.

Non-Power Five conferences with a powerful historic id — the Big West, the MAC, the Ivy League — have remained kind of steady all through the realignment course of, however marriages of comfort have emerged as ex-power convention refugees (outdated Big East faculties, or the colleges that ended up on the mistaken facet of the SWC-to-Big 12 divide) popped as much as fill vacancies elsewhere. Here, we see the arrival of geographically incoherent conferences, or no less than inconvenient ones. Conference USA could be contiguous if not for 75 miles’ value of Mississippi, however its footprint covers a lot of the Southeastern U.S., from Bowling Green, Kentucky, to Miami, to San Antonio. The CAA spreads 11 faculties throughout eight bordering states from Massachusetts to South Carolina. The AAC is the one appropriately named convention, with its eight baseball-playing members unfold throughout seven states. Taking out Tennessee and North Carolina — Memphis and East Carolina are in adjoining states however greater than 800 miles aside — solely two of the remaining states within the convention border one another.

Things are about to get even weirder within the subsequent couple years.

I hold harping on the geographical coherence of conferences for 2 causes, one trivial, the opposite much less so. The trivial cause is that all through the historical past of school sports, a convention has conveyed a definite cultural id. I went to varsity within the SEC, however I’ve additionally lived within the shadow of universities that belonged to the old-school Big East basketball convention, the Big Ten, and the MAC. You’d by no means mistake one for one more, and if that seems to be a factor of the previous, our sports tradition will lose one thing ineffable however essential. That explicit horse, although, has been on its method out of the barn for years. If we do lose the distinctive regionality of school sports, it’ll be survivable, and folks like me will be taught to stay with it, even when we’re being slightly valuable about it now.

The actual concern has been voiced again and again relating to — and right here’s one among my favourite euphemisms within the enterprise — “non-revenue sports,” i.e. not soccer and males’s basketball at most faculties. The soccer tail is wagging the canine right here, as a result of that’s the game that drives the TV contracts that enrich the folks deciding who performs the place.

For soccer, a nationwide convention involving cross-country journey for one sport a few times a season, incessantly with chartered journey, just isn’t an enormous deal. Baseball gamers play three-game weekend collection, with decrease program budgets. Teams from cold-weather climates nearly all the time spend the primary month of the season on the street, as a result of, effectively, do you wish to discover out what it’s wish to hit with a steel bat in Ypsilanti in February? I don’t.

If the Big Ten had any humorousness, they’d schedule the California faculties to open their convention schedules on the street. When I used to be masking school baseball within the Midwest, I went to Ann Arbor in mid-March to see a pitching matchup between Maryland ace Mike Shawaryn and Michigan’s Jake Cronenworth. After the sport I went from the press field right down to the sphere to interview Shawaryn, forgot to zip up my jacket, and acquired kicked within the chest by a burst of 23-degree air as I stepped outdoors. During this yr’s draft mix, I requested Arizona native Roch Cholowsky, then a possible first-day decide and now sure for Big Ten newcomer UCLA, if he owned a winter coat. He mentioned no. He ought to contemplate shopping for one.

Even assuming hospitable climate, cross-country journey is a big time suck on people who find themselves nonetheless making an attempt to maintain up a full school schedule. Most Power Five soccer gamers are on full scholarship and hope to play within the NFL. Most Power Five baseball gamers are going to turn into gymnasium academics or actual property brokers after they get out of faculty. And as of this yr, Division I baseball packages must unfold 11.7 scholarships out over as many as 32 gamers on a 40-man roster. These guys are going to must steadiness an expert journey schedule half the yr with truly going to varsity, a problem that turns into all of the better at faculties like Stanford, Vanderbilt, and Rice.

In his story on realignment for Baseball America, Teddy Cahill defined the affect that such grueling journey may have on these college students. Maybe it’s not each week, however we’re taking a look at a 17-team Big Ten based within the Midwest, however with six faculties on the coasts. A convention just like the remade Big 12, with its bipolar geographic distribution, may mitigate among the journey burden by establishing division-based scheduling, however flying from Cincinnati or Orlando to mainly wherever else within the convention week in and week out isn’t going to be a picnic. It’s going to be onerous on the athletes, coaches, and workers, and greater than that, it’s going to be costly.

With all of that in thoughts, one among three issues goes to occur to varsity baseball within the subsequent a number of years.

Option 1: Continue down the present path.

Previous convention realignment gold rushes have been largely about reshuffling the established order, perhaps including one or two new groups to a convention to courtroom an enormous TV market. (The Big Ten including Rutgers as a pretext to get the convention’s TV community on the air in New York is about as nakedly cynical a sports administration resolution as you’ll ever see, in need of holding the World Cup in Qatar.) Now, it appears to be like like we’re in a race between the Big Ten and the SEC to eat the remainder of school sports, or no less than school soccer. The Pac-12 appears to be like cooked at this level, and it looks as if solely a matter of time earlier than Florida State and/or Clemson tries to bolt for the SEC earlier than it’s too late. Until the cash disappears, the consolidation will proceed.

When soccer is such large enterprise, clearly coaches’ salaries go up and amenities budgets enhance, however a few of that cash does trickle out into different sports. It’s simple to mock the spherical of Big Ten enlargement from a decade in the past, but it surely raised the expectations and requirements for that convention in baseball, and never simply because Nebraska and Maryland have been comparatively profitable on the time. Indiana is a perennial regional crew now. Michigan performed for a nationwide championship in 2019. Illinois has been a nationwide seed within the NCAA event. Penn State, which has been nowhere for the previous 20 years, simply made an enormous splash by hiring head coach Mike Gambino away from Boston College.

Baseball is severe enterprise on the market now. What was a one-bid league 12 years in the past usually will get three or 4 at-large bids and infrequently as not hosts a regional. But as a lot as spending has gone up within the Big Ten because the convention began to note the game, the hole to the SEC has solely grown bigger. South Carolina spent $35 million on a brand new baseball stadium in 2009. A decade later, Mississippi State and Florida have been spending nearly twice that on new ballparks. LSU poached a pitching coach from the Minnesota Twins, and after one season, Georgia employed him away from LSU.

If school soccer turns right into a two-conference superleague centered on the Big Ten and the SEC, and different sports’ alignments observe soccer, the SEC goes to finish up with a good greater monetary and infrastructure benefit over the remainder of the nation than it already has.

Option 2: Major convention faculties de-emphasize or minimize baseball.

If you have been wanting intently at these convention realignment tables, you most likely seen that a number of names have been lacking. Several Power Five faculties don’t sponsor varsity baseball: Wisconsin, Iowa State, Colorado, Syracuse. If these football-first conferences put a serious pressure on college sources, it will not shock me if different faculties adopted swimsuit. In 2011, Cal was set to disband its baseball program earlier than a last-ditch $9 million fundraising effort stayed the crew’s execution. Such a factor could be unthinkable in Florida, Texas, or the remainder of the SEC. But think about a Big Ten faculty with little historical past of success and even relevance in baseball, staring down the next selection: spend $30 million on a brand new ballpark, plus tens of millions extra for high coaches and an indoor observe facility, or go 5–25 in-conference yearly ceaselessly. At a time when the athletics division (or maybe even the college at massive) is dealing with a disaster, would Rutgers spend to maintain up with Ohio State and UCLA? Would Northwestern? Would West Virginia? Kansas? Or would these faculties minimize off a limb to avoid wasting the physique, if the limb goes 20 years between regional appearances and solely attracts a pair hundred followers a sport?

So has the reverse: An influence convention’s greatest attracts see that, if the TV deal pie is split X methods, it behooves the massive faculties to chop the chaff free and divide the spoils X-1 methods. It’s occurred earlier than, when the Big East booted Temple after the 2004 season, solely to welcome the Owls again in 2012 after the final spherical of realignment bloodletting. Which brings up Option 3.

Option 3: Football will get decoupled from the remainder of the convention infrastructure.

This is what I’d wish to see occur.

I do know it looks as if no person outdoors the SEC (outdoors of Georgia and Alabama, if we’re being trustworthy) has an actual shot at successful a nationwide soccer championship. The SEC has gained the previous 4 nationwide soccer championships and despatched no less than one crew to the nationwide title sport in 16 of the previous 17 seasons.

The convention is much more dominant in baseball. The SEC has gained the previous 4 nationwide titles in baseball as effectively, and all six finalists up to now three seasons will play within the SEC subsequent yr. In the previous 15 College World Series, there have been three last collection that pit Florida towards one other SEC crew, however just one that concerned no SEC groups. Over that point, 10 of the 16 groups from subsequent yr’s SEC have performed for the nationwide championship no less than as soon as; three of the six others have made it to Omaha twice up to now six seasons. This convention is so deep, so well-resourced, so well-buttressed culturally, that we’re approaching a degree at which the remainder of the nation is enjoying for second place. That’ll solely turn into extra true if Florida State and Clemson be a part of up a number of years down the street.

There are particular person Big Ten, ACC, and Big 12 packages with the wherewithal to face as much as the SEC juggernauts, however that may and help isn’t there from high to backside in these conferences. That raises an apparent query: Why ought to dedication to soccer dictate convention affiliation throughout all sports?

I’m not completely certain what’s going to occur to particular person baseball packages on this newest spherical of realignment, however the groups whose fates curiosity me most are USC and Oregon State. USC is essentially the most embellished program in baseball historical past, with 12 nationwide championships and extra impactful large leaguers than nearly anybody: Tom Seaver, Randy Johnson, Mark McGwire, Mark Prior, Barry Zito, Fred Lynn, the Boone brothers… the listing goes on. But this program has been a digital nonentity within the twenty first century. Will transferring to the Big Ten sign a return to relevance, or will we watch the Trojans get stomped by Iowa and Michigan State yearly?

Oregon State, then again, has been the very best West Coast program of the previous 20 years. Since 2005, the Beavers have gained 5 regular-season Pac-12 titles, made six journeys to the College World Series, and gained three nationwide titles. And now they’re being left with out a chair because the music stops within the Pac-12. If you have been drafting soccer packages into an influence convention, Oregon State, final yr’s 10-win season however, most likely wouldn’t be wherever close to the highest of the listing. But if the Beavers are left with out a dwelling, they need to be excessive on the listing of any convention with an curiosity in baseball.

Until the latest run of SEC dominance, school baseball’s facilities of energy had extra to do with geography and training than convention model recognition. Taking baseball in isolation, Oregon State would make a pure associate for Cal State-Fullerton and the opposite Big West heavyweights. Rice, Dallas Baptist, Wichita State, and Southern Miss would make extra sense within the Big 12 than would Utah or the Kansas faculties. But with a purpose to do this, it’s a must to decouple soccer’s hierarchy from the group of different sports.

It may be finished. The reconstituted Big East preserves among the rivalries amongst basketball packages like UConn, Villanova, Georgetown, and St. John’s, faculties whose historical past in soccer is much less storied. Or contemplate a sport like ice hockey, which has simply 61 Division I males’s groups, in comparison with 300 in baseball. Like baseball, hockey is a closely regionalized school sport whose historic powers usually have little to do with soccer. And with groups as far-flung as Alaska, Arizona, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, journey in hockey is its personal distinctive problem. So they mentioned to hell with different sports’ convention construction. The solely convention that sponsors each soccer and males’s ice hockey is the Big Ten, which incorporates simply seven groups (amongst them Notre Dame) and solely got here into being throughout the previous 10 years. The MAC groups that play hockey don’t all play in the identical convention, nor do the Patriot League groups. Six of the eight Ivy League faculties have Division I males’s hockey groups, however the Ivy League doesn’t sponsor the game itself.

Baseball may do that too if it needed: Maybe all 16 (for now) SEC groups have a dire must play baseball on the highest degree, but when the identical isn’t true of the Big Ten or Big 12, or if a middling soccer faculty likes its possibilities higher on the diamond, it may play in the next league.

The large impediment: tv rights, notably in conferences just like the Big Ten and ACC, whose in-house networks present loads of convention baseball. How a lot would Northwestern stand to lose if it de-emphasized baseball? How a lot would an Indiana State be entitled to as a baseball-only member?

Eventually, somebody’s going to determine this query out, as a result of the present mannequin expects each faculty to function like a Texas or Florida and entertain nationwide championship aspirations in each sport. That’s not sustainable ceaselessly, even for faculties which might be at the moment well-ensconced within the financial institution vault. Either the highest couple dozen soccer groups will break free from the NCAA as we all know it, or groups that dominate in much less prestigious sports shall be discarded from main convention sports for lack of soccer prowess. It already appears to be like like that’s taking place to Oregon State.

Until then, each different sport resides below the circumstances soccer is dictating. The potential cash is eye-watering, but it surely comes at its personal value.