Most of the readers of this site are well versed in the structure of the NCAA baseball tournament. And who isn’t? It’s simply 16 host teams, 8 of which are national seeds, hosting 16 4-team, double elimination tournaments, the winners of which play a best of three series to go to Omaha. The four team, double elimination tournaments are called regionals and are seeded 1-4 within the regionals. Half of the 1-seeds in the regionals are also national seeds. Clear as mud?
For college baseball fans it is clear, and it’s a great structure for choosing a champion. However as the college game continues to grow fans who are new to the game may not understand the seedings as well. So, we decided to see what the brackets would look like if the baseball tournament was seeded like the more commonly understood basketball tournament. Here’s what we got:
The West Region
The Midwest Region
The South Region
The East Region
That’s not the way the committee put the bracket together, so it can be a bit misleading. Nonetheless I think this format is more familiar to many fans, and it wouldn’t be the worst thing for the committee to keep this in mind when they are seeding everything.
