Welcome again to varsity baseball convention realignment. For these of you who missed the primary class, right here’s a fast abstract: The individuals who run school soccer are drunk with energy, and are tearing up many years of geographical and cultural alignment with a view to chase the most important TV offers they will get. Good for them. Sadly the remainder of school sports activities — maybe the entire of American greater schooling, much less these Ivy League dorks whose private grievances turn into nationwide information — is merely a vestigial appendage of the Soccer Bowl Subdivision.
The realignment of 2023-24 leaves two necessary inquiries to be answered, one pressing, the opposite existentially necessary. The pressing query: What occurs to Oregon State and Washington State, the 2 colleges left with out a chair by Pac-12 collapse? This query is arguably extra necessary for baseball than it’s every other sport, as Oregon State is a nationwide powerhouse. The necessary query: Can the ACC maintain it collectively, or is it too sure for a Pac-12-type implosion?
We acquired some readability on each of these questions this week, as Oregon State and Washington State discovered a brand new partnership with the WCC (although not for baseball), whereas Florida State is taking its first step towards leaving the ACC.
On Thursday, Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic reported that the 2 Pac-12 orphans (by the way, “The Pac-12 Orphans” would have been a terrific turn-of-the-century indie rock band from the Pacific Northwest) are on the verge of becoming a member of the West Coast Convention as affiliate members in most non-football sports activities for the 2024-25 faculty yr. Oregon State and Wazzu have already solid a scheduling partnership with the Mountain West for the approaching soccer season; they’ll each play a slate of MWC groups, however is not going to be a part of the convention formally. The WCC doesn’t sponsor soccer.
That is excellent news for the 2 colleges, largely as a result of it buys them time to search out a great everlasting residence. Oregon State and Washington State wish to keep on the energy convention degree, however within the meantime they only want somebody to placed on the schedule subsequent season, and the WCC is geographically applicable, with groups up and down the West Coast. (You may suppose it’s redundant to level that out, however within the age of Cal, Stanford, and SMU within the ACC, nothing could be left to probability.) Culturally, it’s attention-grabbing that these two massive state colleges are becoming a member of a convention hitherto composed solely of personal, sectarian establishments, however athletics are a terrific ecumenical establishment.
The actually attention-grabbing a part of the burgeoning alliance is that baseball is explicitly carved out of the settlement; Oregon State and Washington State may be a part of the convention in some unspecified time in the future, however for now they’re occurring as independents.
That may sound just a little scary, but it surely signifies that these two colleges — notably Oregon State, which for the previous 20 years has arguably been the highest baseball faculty on the West Coast — are taking care to plot the destiny of their baseball applications particularly, reasonably than simply chucking them on the nearest handy protected harbor.
The concept of Oregon State as a nationally marauding impartial, menacing whoever is silly sufficient to schedule them, is a fairly enjoyable idea to think about. There was one impartial Division I baseball group in 2023: Hartford, which was within the means of transitioning to Division III. The Hawks performed simply 37 video games all yr and went 4-33. I’d count on an impartial Oregon State to be just a little extra profitable.
The most important concern I’d have for Oregon State persevering with as an impartial is scheduling. Definitely there’d be no scarcity of groups keen to come back to Corvallis for midweek video games, however as soon as convention play picks up in March, it’ll be troublesome to search out critical opponents to fit in for weekend collection, all of the extra so now that the SEC, Huge Ten, ACC, and Huge 12 are all increasing.
There are applications from different conferences with the branding and aggressive bona fides to be value OSU’s whereas; Cal State Fullerton, which performs within the 11-team Huge West, normally finds a minimum of one weekend late within the season for a big-name opponent. (Final yr, the Titans performed Texas and Pepperdine in March and TCU in Might towards the top of the common season, the latter being the Kirk Saarloos Derby.) However with nearly a yr’s value of lead time, I feel the 2 remaining Pac-12 groups will be capable of negotiate and cajole their manner into aggressive schedules.
In the end, although, it’d be simpler for them to discover a convention. Have a spot yr, go barnstorming, then calm down to begin a household. If that’s the WCC, that’d be… positive, I assume. Final season, the WCC was a two-bid league, with Loyola Marymount and Santa Clara making the NCAA Event. Different groups within the convention embody Saint Mary’s, BYU, Gonzaga, Pepperdine, and San Diego.
That’s the College of San Diego, alma mater of Kris Bryant. To not be confused with San Diego State, alma mater of Tony Gwynn and Stephen Strasburg, which performs within the Mountain West. Or the College of California-San Diego, the place Billy Beane attended faculty however didn’t play baseball, which performs within the Huge West. To not be glib, however there are 5 colleges with Division I baseball applications in New York Metropolis; not certainly one of them has New York within the title. (That features Manhattan Faculty, whose campus is within the Bronx and whose baseball group performs in Pomona.)
Including Oregon State and Washington State would most likely make the WCC right into a three-bid league. However the strongest mid-major convention within the space, or a minimum of probably the most storied, is the Huge West. That’s the house of Fullerton, Lengthy Seashore State, UC-Santa Barbara, and UC-Irvine. My authentic proposal again in August was for Oregon State and Wazzu to hitch with these Huge West powers to type a type of impartial baseball-only super-conference. Retaining the WCC plan on the again burner leaves that possibility on the desk; if such a baseball-only convention have been to take form, that would function a blueprint for colleges which can be extra profitable in baseball than soccer.
That’s about to be very related within the ACC. For the reason that final spherical of realignment chatter, Florida State’s soccer group went undefeated, however misplaced its beginning quarterback to harm. The Faculty Soccer Playoff choice committee then elevated Texas and Alabama, each one-loss convention champions, to the playoff forward of FSU. The reason is that whereas the Seminoles may need completed extra by going undefeated, Texas and Alabama are higher groups.
Individuals in Tallahassee are pissed. And so they have a degree; is the ACC actually an influence convention if the undefeated champion could be handed over for a playoff spot in favor of groups that took losses? And if not, why ought to Florida State — a program with assets, historical past, and ambition to match anybody in school soccer — stick round?
The technical purpose: The ACC owns FSU’s media rights till 2036. The Florida State board of trustees is now considering avenues for getting out of that settlement. There’s no precedent for a authorized problem to a grant of rights, however there may be additionally no contract so ironclad {that a} sufficiently offended group of southern school soccer boosters can’t discover a option to void it. It’s within the Structure.
If FSU does handle to flee, that’d be the start of the top of the ACC as a soccer convention. Clemson’s latest run of dominance however, FSU is the motivating ACC soccer energy. If the Seminoles depart, Clemson may tag alongside. Even when that doesn’t occur, we’re seeing the primary indicators of cracking within the rock that William C. Swinney has constructed his program on. What’s an ACC with out FSU or a dominant Clemson?
Not a lot, in soccer phrases, only a venue for future state legislators to go 8-4 and get stomped by SEC opposition within the Gator Bowl. In baseball, Clemson and FSU are enormous applications, however they don’t prop the convention up. Virginia, North Carolina, Wake Forest, Miami, Louisville, and NC State are all enormous applications in their very own proper, they usually’d make up among the finest leagues in school baseball on their very own. Plus Stanford, which simply went to the Faculty World Sequence, is within the convention now too.
No matter authorized pretext Florida State finds to attempt to pressure its manner out of the ACC, the league isn’t going to dissolve in a single day. That provides the opposite ACC colleges time to discover a resolution, whether or not that’s to remain the course or get extra inventive. Greater than that, Oregon State is now a check case for what occurs to a significant school baseball program when its convention up and vanishes. If the Pac-12 orphans do handle to pioneer a baseball-only energy convention, ACC baseball may use that as a blueprint. The remaining groups may lose Florida State and barely even discover — a minimum of on the baseball area.
Each of those tales are a good distance from their conclusions, however how they prove will assist decide the form of faculty baseball within the years to come back. The following domino isn’t anyplace close to falling, but it surely’s out of the field.