NCAA Tournament bracket selection Monday

With the MLB in offseason disarray, 2022 was a watershed year for college baseball. ESPN aired over 2200 live games and we saw some amazing play in the SEC, the Big 12, and the Pac-12, with Tennessee stepping up to look like a generational powerhouse.

The field of 64 teams that will be competing for the college baseball championship will consist of the 31 teams who qualify through automatic bids as conference champions plus 33 at-large teams who will be selected by the NCAA Division I Baseball Committee.

While the entire tournament is often referred to as the College World Series, in fact, the CWS only begins once the second round has finished and there are only eight teams left. The entire event, including the two preliminary rounds, are actually correctly known as the NCAA Division I Tournament.

The format for the opening round of 64 is a double-elimination format, with teams seeded one to four across 16 regional groups. The top two in each group move on to the Super Regional bracket where they will compete to whittle it down to eight and the tournament will move on to Omaha, Nebraska.

Here’s the complete calendar:

2022 NCAA Division I baseball tournament

Defending champions Mississippi State have had an abysmal season and did not qualify for inclusion in the 2022 NCAA Tournament.

The first-ever College World Series was in 1947 and included only eight teams, divided into two four-team, single-elimination brackets. Over the years, the tournament was expanded to include qualifying rounds to make it a true championship competition.

All of the winners of the College World Series