The Tennessee Volunteers celebrate with their fans after defeating the Texas A&M Aggies to win the Division I Men’s Baseball Championship held at Charles Schwab Field on June 24, 2024 in Omaha, Nebraska. (Photo by Jamie Schwaberow/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
OMAHA, Neb. – Neither heat nor storms over the past two weeks could keep fans away from the College World Series, and game three of the final was no different.
Here in Omaha, where champions have been crowned in college baseball under the June sun for the last 74 years, the message this week was unmistakable: College baseball is big and only getting bigger.
For years, college baseball at the Division I level has played third fiddle behind football and men’s basketball as a revenue sport, but for both college baseball’s tradition powers and programs that are on the rise, baseball is rapidly becoming a larger part of the athletic landscape than it’s ever been.
Take, for example, Tennessee, which is playing for a Men’s College World Series title for the first time since 1951 this year and won their first title with a two-games-to-one series win over Texas A&M. Last year, the school announced a $100 million renovation of 31-year-old Lindsey Nelson Stadium that will bring the park up to a capacity of 7,750 from 5,548. More seats and capacity mean more fans in the stands and more revenue for Tennessee athletics. More revenue means more amenities for fans and more creature comforts for players, making recruiting easier on the coaching staff.
When Major League Baseball expanded to 30 teams in 1998, the MLB Draft was a 50-round event, and that year, 1,445 players were selected. Back then, a high school player with the talent and ability to play in college often had to make a difficult choice between signing with an MLB organization that held his rights following the draft or going to a junior college or NCAA program.
But with the MLB Draft being cut to 40 rounds and then 20, MLB limiting teams to having 180 players under contract at any one time, and the minor leagues going from 140 teams to 100 in 2021, there are fewer spots for talented high schoolers in affiliated baseball.
The result?
“This thing has turned into a monster,” Tennessee head coach Tony Vitello said following game one of the finals. By “this thing,” Vitello is referring to college baseball. “The draft is shorter. There’s fewer minor league teams. There’s more resources that these kids see.”
Nowadays, top college baseball programs have coaches with extensive experience in professional baseball. Take, for example, Texas A&M pitching coach Max Weiner, who served as pitching coordinator for the Seattle Mariners for five seasons before going to College Station. They also have team-specific weight rooms, training facilities, academic advisors, TrackMan systems to analyze what pitchers are throwing, how batters are hitting, and more.
And if you were 18 years old and had the choice between playing in Low-A ball in, say, Kannapolis, N.C. or Visalia, Calif., in front of 3,000 people a night or playing in front of 5,500 with Vitello’s Volunteers at a sparkling facility like Lindsey Nelson Stadium and seeing similar crowds on the road across the Southeastern Conference, is there really much of a decision to be made?
Division I baseball is just as entertaining as the low minors have always been, and it adds the alumni affinity and rivalry elements to fandom.
“You could go pay a ton of money and watch the Braves play. But you can get right up close to these guys. And they’re the next guy on the Braves or the Phillies or whatever it might be,” Vitello said. “… I think you show up, and you have your hot dog. If you want to have a beverage, have a beverage. And you yell stuff at me if you’re wearing maroon. And the orange people yell crazy stuff at the other team.”
With two programs in this year’s final that had never been there before, new fans got to experience the sweet taste of victory in Omaha… and take the bitter pill of getting all the way to Omaha, only to lose in the final game of the college sports year.
“I don’t know who had more people or who were more loud, but there are two fan bases that are always hungry for wins. But because, like you said, they hadn’t been here before, it kind of sets the stage for what’s going to happen in the future,” Vitello said.
Over the past 74 years, the Men’s College World Series has gone from a small event that lost money to one of Omaha’s two biggest annual events – the other being the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, where finance geeks, rabid capitalists, and disciples of Warren Buffett pack the Big O to hear wisdom from Buffett and Charlie Munger.
Last season, when Louisiana State took home the title, besting SEC Rival Florida in three games, a new attendance record was set, with 392,946 packing Charles Schwab Field over 16 games. That record wasn’t matched this season, but only because there were fewer games because Tennessee and Texas A&M advanced to the finals with undefeated records.
The fans that came to the final series this year were rewarded. In 2023, the outcome of games two and three were never in doubt after the fourth inning. This year, all three games in the final series provided suspense and drama to the end, giving the 25,000-plus fans in the ballpark and the hundreds of thousands watching at home a healthy helping of drama as A&M and Tennessee played their hearts out with each program looking for its first National Championship in baseball.
Even the heat, which hit triple digits on Monday, didn’t keep fans away. Moving through the Omaha Baseball Village, full of vendors selling various College World Series wares, was difficult all week long, and the Charles Schwab Field seats were packed with fans clad in orange or maroon, depending upon their rooting interest on Monday night.
“That felt like a road game, but tonight felt like a ball game where the stadium was literally split,” said A&M head coach Jim Schlossnagle. “And so I think that’s really great for our sport because a lot of times, a college bowl series is a neutral crowd.”
The 24,685 in attendance Monday were rewarded with one of the most exciting games do-or-die games possible, with Texas A&M battling to the last strike, whittling Tennessee’s 6-1 lead down to a single run, with the tying run at the plate in the top of the ninth before succumbing.
College baseball is big and only getting bigger, and the College World Series will hold its 75th edition here in 2025.
Will we see you in Omaha next June?
NOTEBOOK: Tennessee’s Dylan Dreiling hit a home run in each of the three games of the College World Series final. He was named the Most Outstanding Player of the 2024 College World Series … Asked following game three if he had any interest in the head coaching job at Texas, Aggies head coach Jim Schlossnagle said, “I left my family to be the coach at Texas A&M. I took the job at Texas A&M to never take another job again. And that hasn’t changed in my mind.” … The Volunteers last played for a College World Series championship in 1951, falling to Oklahoma in the championship game.
