Baseball head coach not satisfied with college world series format

Ryne Sulier
Daily Skiff.com
Issue date: 6/10/10

Head baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle voiced his dissent against the seeding format of the NCAA College World Series after TCU secured it's chance to play Texas in the super regional round for a berth to the College World Series.

"I think our sport has grown enough to where the best teams should end up in Omaha, NE," Schlossnagle said. "The best teams that earn their way through the regular season should have the best opportunity to get there."

Schlossnagle said the NCAA should seed more than eight teams, as he went even further to advocate a 64-team format.

He had support from Baylor head baseball coach Steve Smith after the Bears fell 9-0 to the Horned Frogs in the Fort Worth Regional championship game.

"The things that not right about this regional stuff has everything to do with the number two seeded (team) in the country getting matched up with what would have been the nine or 10 seeded team… in basketball," Smith said. Since we don't seed this tournament past eight, you basically have a regional bias in this tournament.

"Probably TCU and Texas will both be better than some body that makes it to Omaha."

Smith noted that about 98 percent of the NCAA's budget goes to the NCAA basketball tournament, but that college baseball is the NCAA's second-largest revenue producer.

"I think our kids got t-shirts," Smith said.

"There is another fully seeded NCAA tournament that loses anywhere from $8-12 million dollars annually," he said. "You could get a lot more t-shirts."

Baseball Schedule Biased Against the South and West

Schlossnagle said baseball should be played in the summertime, not in early spring. He called for starting the season in early April and ending in August.

Smith said that northern schools lobbied to push back the start of the season because of weather, but that it makes it particularly difficult during the regional rounds in the South and West because of the heat.

"If the NCAA and the presidents would allow our sport to grow the way it has the potential to do so, we could really do some special things across the country and also have a lot of growth and have the best teams end up there," Schlossnagle said. "It's not fair."