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In college baseball, why do only a handful of conferences dominate?


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    There are 32 college baseball conferences, and it seems like we only ever hear about the SEC (Louisiana State Tigers, A&M Aggies and Arkansas Razorbacks), the ACC ( North Carolina Tar Heels, Miami Hurricanes), Pacific 12 ( UCLA Bruins and Oregon State Beavers), Big West ( Fullerton Titans, Cal Poly Mustangs), Big East (Louisville Cardinals, Notre Dame Fighting Irish).

    That is only 5 conferences total. With only two or three teams rising to the top of each. What sets these conferences apart from the others? Are they schools with more robust baseball programs? Granted, many colleges within these conferences have nothing but baseball clubs. When a college or a university only has a baseball club, it's pretty indicative that the school isn't throwing very much funding towards baseball. I remember my school (University of North Texas) just had a baseball club, mostly because their emphasis is mostly in football. Perhaps college baseball is just the red headed step child in the world of college sports.

    I just find it strange that there are some big schools within these lesser talked about conferences, schools that have become house hold names throughout the history of college sports, and yet they hardly make a blip on the college baseball radar. You have the Ivy conference, for crying out loud. Aren't these schools supposed to dominate the world of college sports? Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale, Brown, anyone? For the most part, these schools have handed over championships and titles to schools that they completely eclipse in age. So what gives?

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    It' an interesting conversation, when opened up to all college sports. I think the answer is the same in college athletics, no matter if you are talking about baseball, basketball, football or whatever sport. Big schools with a history of winning in any given sport will naturally draw the best talent from all over the US through recruitment. They can spend more to fly recruiters out to high school games, for one example. Plus they have instant name recognition, whereas a smaller program will have a much tougher time drawing talent.

    Also, if you are a high quality high school player, you want to naturally go to a big school, the biggest you can go to, to get more national recognition, ultimately hoping to get attention from pro recruiters.

    One conference you left out though that is doing extremely well in the CSW is the Big 12. Just yesterday, TCU, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State all made it to the College World Series. So 3 of the 8 teams are all from that conference.

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    Dallasite Wrote:

    One conference you left out though that is doing extremely well in the CSW is the Big 12. Just yesterday, TCU, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State all made it to the College World Series. So 3 of the 8 teams are all from that conference.

    Oh yeah, I did leave that out. They are doing very well, indeed.