A mere week before the start of the NCAA baseball season, the only people who know about it are players and parents. Who do you blame? Tradition and reality, perhaps, and “some things don’t change easily.”
The Buckeyes open the 2022 baseball season this coming Friday afternoon in Port Charlotte, Florida. And likely…98% of Buckeye Nation won’t know.
There’ll be no media coverage – no television, no newspapers, no ESPN, no Gameday, Herbstreit, Corso and Fowler. Just family, some ‘snowbirds’, and a few scouts.
If baseball was once the national pastime, college baseball, by comparison, is like a backyard party with a few good friends. If you’re a parent of a college baseball player anywhere in the last hundred years, or you’re just interested in reading about it, you’re accustomed to anonymity. It’s not an oversight. It’s a fact of life!
To anyone who’d like to come to the party – who wonders how you follow college baseball during those wonderful first weeks in February and March – it’s gonna’ take some sacrifice on your part. Go online (of course), Google the school, find a schedule, and make some travel plans if you want to see it first-hand.
Just don’t expect promotions, or official school discounts for travel and hotel packages like they do for the Rose Bowl. If there are five hundred, or five thousand people in your group…you’re on your own.
The maddening truth? NCAA baseball doesn’t matter like football and basketball…because it doesn’t command money. And if you don’t make money, or at least attract a big crowd, priority emerges like a blinding spotlight.
As for attracting a crowd, Big Ten coaches lament that it’s hard to attract a crowd in March and April…when it’s 40 degrees. Michigan State’s Jake Boss recently admitted in a press conference that the University of Arkansas refused to come to East Lansing to play a non-con series because of cold weather. Which begs the question: Why can’t the NCAA play baseball in the summer?
Said Boss, “We keep pushing for it, and there are no disadvantages for the student athlete. It makes all the sense in the world, but it’s change. And some things don’t change easily.”
What hurts, of course, is that your kid works just as hard to pursue his baseball dream as the quarterback and point guard do, come fall and winter.
Some say basketball has lost lustre because of transfers and players leaving early for the NBA – that it’s relevance depends in large part on getting to the NCAA tournament, where CBS trickle-down casts the national spotlight.
But no one can question the importance of football. It is the king, the priority for NCAA anticipation from one season to the next. It’s the national feast. And everything else in college sports watches and waits while the king eats…because it pays for everything!
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Baseball has always existed in a small sphere of recognition, and with that some uncomfortable reality. If there’s a bowl game the internet is buzzing with information about tickets, reservations, flights and rent-a-car deals.
By comparison, twice in the past five years the Buckeyes have gone to the NCAA tournament in baseball, and pretty much anonymously.
Mind you, I’m not singling out Ohio State, and I suppose there’s a self-serving tone with this, the same as if Baseball America or D1 Baseball were to write it. But they will not be writing about this, because it’s counter to their purpose, an inconvenient truth about college baseball from sea to shining sea – South Carolina to Southern Cal.
If you want to follow any given team there’s little or no news outside of your own personal ambition to find what the school, itself, can provide. And that, by demand, is proportional. Football has a roomful of sports information assistants at every NCAA school, pumping out details to every media source imaginable. Baseball will have just one, and to his ever-lovin’ credit, the Buckeyes’ Gary Petit is one of the country’s best.
Baseball gets covered on a slow sports day. Local TV might send a camera crew (one guy) out to get ten seconds of fill. The Dispatch hasn’t had a writer at a Buckeyes baseball game in years. There were 27 Big Ten players selected in last summer’s MLB draft, and the Big Ten network gave it lip service compared to their jubilance over the NFL draft.
Attention? Compare what people know about Ryan Day’s bio as a former NFL assistant to that of Greg Beals’ time as a minor league catcher with the Mets organization.
And without Google, can anyone in Ohio even tell me who the baseball coach is at Michigan…the dreaded TTUN?
Priority because of conference, you think? Nick Saban is the football coach at Alabama, but the next thousand people you ask can’t tell you who the baseball coach is.
Seriously, can you even remember who won the NCAA national championship in baseball, just last June? Or what conference that team came from?
For the sake of edification, Mississippi State (SEC) won the 2021 title, the school’s first in baseball after eleven trips to the College World Series. And speaking of the CWS, can you name the city that hosts it?
Probably not. But for the sake of comparison, had Fresno State, who’s never won a football title, played Georgia instead of Alabama, everyone in America would know their nickname, stadium capacity, and distinguished alumni. They’d make a really big deal out of Derek Carr having played there.
But no one would ever guess that Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge played there, too. In fact, Judge was a first round pick in 2013, the 32nd player taken, overall.
So if you want to see the Buckeyes play…if you want to enjoy some warm Gulf Coast weather…you can do both by getting away this coming week (February 18 through the 21st), and I’ll help you out. They play in Port Charlotte, Florida, there’s plenty of hotels, and these aren’t over-priced, meaningless major league spring training games. They play Marshall (Friday), Indiana State (Saturday and Sunday), and Brigham Young (Monday), games that actually count towards their 56-game record.
There’ll be no marching band, by the way. If you want some Carmen Ohio TBDBITL will be at Ohio Stadium on April 16 for the spring football game, the same weekend the Buckeyes are playing in Maryland.
Great trip, great food, and great weather. And of course, a few good friends.
But no marching band. Not even Maryland’s.
Watch the Buckeyes play on February 18 thru the 21st, here in Port Charlotte.
The Buckeyes' Wyatt Loncar delivers a pitch during opening weekend, 2020, at Port Charlotte, Florida. The Buckeyes are there again next week, facing Marshall, Indiana State, and Brigham Young University. (Press Pros Feature Photos)