NCAA BASEBALL
How does the NCAA Baseball tournament and College World Series work?
With the conference tournaments now underway, the NCAA Tournament and College World Series are just around the corner. We take a look at the two.
As spring gives way to summer, colleges around the country begin to focus on Omaha, Nebraska. Each year, the best baseball programs in the country compete in the NCAA tournament, with the best moving on to the College World Series. But what exactly is the difference between the two? Isn’t one just another name for the other? How does it all work?
The NCAA Division I Baseball Tournament is in fact the name for the entire process, from conference through to national champion. The conference tournaments around the country pit each of their own schools against each other to determine who is the champion of that conference. The total of 31 winners of each of these conferences sorted into national rankings and will receive automatic berths, with the 33 remaining spots made up of teams who receive at-large bids, which are decided by the NCAA Division I Baseball Committee.
As part of this process, sixteen teams receive national seeds, and these sixteen teams will host Regional tournaments. Each tournament is made up of four seeded teams in a double-elimination bracket. The winner of each of these Regional tournaments will move on to the second tier, known as the Super Regionals.
Again, the top eight seeded teams will host the bottom eight in a predetermined pairing, playing a best-of-three series to move on to Omaha.
The final eight teams remaining will move on to Omaha, Nebraska and play in the College World Series. The CWS follows the format of earlier rounds, with two double-elimination brackets of four teams each. The winners of each bracket meet in a best-of-three final where the winner is crowned National Champion.
When did the College World Series start?
The first College World Series tournament was in 1947, and featured just eight teams, divided into two single-elimination brackets. The winners met in a best-of-three final in Kalamazoo, Michigan. California went undefeated through this series, beating Yale to become the first national champion.
The tournament has grown to 64 teams competing in four rounds of play. Here are the major changes over the years:
- 1948: First-round playoffs were changed to double-elimination.
- 1949: The final was expanded to a four-team, double-elimination format, and the site changed to Wichita, Kansas.
- 1950: Site moves to Omaha, Nebraska.
- 1954: Field expands to 23 teams. The field size bounces around between 21 and 32 for the next two decades. In the 22 years between 1954 and 1975, the field is never the same size two years in a row.
- 1976: Field expands to 34 teams, where it will stay until 1982.
- 1982: Field expands to 36 teams. Will expand multiple times in the next few years, before settling at 48 teams in 1987, where it will stay until 1999.
- 1988-1998: The eight regional champions are seeded into two four-team brackets. Those two brackets play double-elimination with the bracket winners then meeting in a one-game championship.
- 1999: Field expands to current size of 64 teams, super regionals are added.
- 2003: CWS finals become a best-of-three series.
When is the College World Series?
The NCAA Division I baseball tournament has already begun the process with the conference tournaments, but the College World Series will be held from Friday, June 14 until Monday, June 24.