The pinnacle of college baseball is post season play. It's a time of the year when the national spotlight turns toward college baseball. Post season play is when dreams are reached and programs are established. One of the best parts about the college baseball post season is that anybody remaining can beat anybody that's left. Cinderella's emerge as the post season opens up. It's a game of parity and that is proven each and every season as monsters of college baseball are knocked off by unknown programs. Sixty four teams share one common goal as the post season gets under way; get to Omaha.
Ten years ago one of the greatest creations in college baseball history came about when the NCAA introduced the Super Regional. That had several implications to the post season format. First, it jumped the number of regional tournaments from 8 to 16. It also jumped the number of teams from 48 to 64. Now, winning a regional doesn't get you to baseballs' ultimate stage. You must first battle it out in a three-game series with another regional winner to see who will be getting on the plane to go to the world series.
We're going to take the next few days and analyze the post season of college baseball. We wanted to take a look into the numbers and see which programs and which conferences own the most success in post season play.
Today we'll be taking a look at the regional tournament. Our numbers will come from every season that the Super Regional has been in existance.
We first decided to look at individual programs and see how they've faired in reaching the post season. Here's how the numbers turned out when we looked at how many Regional tournaments individual programs have participated in.
Most Regional Appearances
(since '99)
10 Cal State Fullerton
10 Florida State
10 Miami
10 Oral Roberts
10 Rice
10 Texas
9 Arizona State
9 Bethune Cookman
9 Clemson
9 East Carolina
9 North Carolina
9 South Carolina
9 Stanford
9 Tulane
9 Wichita State
8 Arkansas
8 Baylor
8 Georgia Tech
8 Long Beach State
8 LSU
8 Mississippi
8 Mississippi State
8 Nebraska
8 Notre Dame
8 Pepperdine
As you can see, there have been several clubs that have made it the the Regional every single year since the inception of the Super Regional. That is amazing consistency considering the parity that exists in college baseball. Cal State Fullerton, Miami, Florida State, Oral Roberts, Rice, and Texas have qualified each and every year.
Several more teams have made all but one time. In all, twenty five teams have qualified for the Regional 8 or more times over the last 10 seasons. Most of these schools come from the power conferences across the country. A few schools however have accomplished this from middle of the pack and lower conferences. Bethune Cookman's tournament hopes ride on their ability to win their conference tournament each and every season. Pretty impressive to see that they've accomplished that 9 out of 10 times. Oral Roberts plays in a similar conference and has accomplished that 10 out of 10 times! Without the Super Regional and the introduction to automatic bids for each conference, these clubs would not have been able to experience post season play like they have.
After looking at individual programs, we wanted to take a look into conferences as a whole. The following is the breakdown of each conference and their tournament representatives over the last 10 seasons.
Most Regional Appearances
(since '99)
74 SEC
65 ACC
55 Big XII
47 Conference USA
43 Pac 10
35 Sunbelt
27 Big West
24 Big East
19 Big Ten
19 Colonial
19 Missouri Valley
17 Southern
16 West Coast
13 Atlantic Sun
13 Big South
13 Southland
12 WAC
10 Atlantic 10
10 Horizon
10 Ivy
10 MAC
10 MEAC
10 Mountain West
10 Patriot
10 SWAC
10 The Summit
9 NEC
9 Ohio Valley
7 America East
7 MAAC
4 Independent
As you can see, it is the SEC that has an overwhelming advantage in the number of representatives they've been able to send to the Regionals. That's an average of 7.4 teams each and every year that the SEC has sent to the Regional! The ACC is second, followed by the Big XII and Conference USA. Surprisingly, the PAC 10 has only sent 43 teams to the Regional over the last 10 years. That's only 8 teams more than the Sunbelt has sent.
Every conference has sent at least 10 representatives to the Regional. This is due to the automatic bid that every league now receives. As you can see, some of the conferences numbers don't add up. That is because we did our numbers based on the teams that are currently in each league. Some of the leagues' past representatives have moved on to other conferences. The conferences with 10 or less bids shown above are considered one-bid leagues. That is, the representative of the conference will be whoever wins the conference tournament. At-large bids are very rarely if at all handed out to teams in these conferences who don't win their tournaments. The independents are the exception. They do not receive an automatic bid. The only representatives that they've sent have been teams that have earned automatic bids or where once in a conference and went as the representative of that conference.
As the week progresses we will take a look at statistics on Super Regional, College World Series, and teams that have hosted a regional or super regional.
