College baseball legend Ron Polk has told us again and again through the years: “There is no such thing as an upset in baseball.”
Polk is right, of course. Baseball contains so many variables: bad hops, sore arms, sudden wind gusts, line drives that find gloves, weakly hit ground balls that find holes, capricious umpiring, etc. All that contributes to the fact that anything can happen on any given day in baseball. But if we don’t call them upsets, then what to call what we have seen happen again and again in the NCAA Baseball Tournament that continues today at sites other than Mississippi?
Keep in mind, we are watching college baseball in a new era when the richer schools in the elite power conferences can simply buy the best players from the smaller schools in lesser leagues. You would think the pay-for-play and the transfer portal would make it doubly hard for the Murray States, the UTSAs and the Wright States of the college baseball world to compete with the SEC and other power conferences.
But, yet, here we are. Samples:
- Closest to home, Murray State, a 4-seed from the Missouri Valley Conference, comes to Oxford, knocks off Ole Miss twice and wins a regional, probably playing in front of more fans in two games than they played before in their entire regular season. Get this: The Murray State head coach Dan Skirka reportedly makes $68,000 a year. Many power conference players make that much and more. Mississippi State just signed Brian O’Connor to a contract that will pay him $2.9 million a year. Nevertheless, the Murray State Racers came off the bus in Oxford hitting line drives and never quit. They will play a Super Regional at Duke beginning Saturday. I would not bet against them.
- No. 1 seed Vanderbilt was eliminated by Wright State of the Horizon League. Wright State eliminated the Commodores before eventually losing to Louisville in the championship game. For those who don’t know, Wright State is located in Dayton, Ohio. The Horizon League includes such name brands as Youngstown State, Robert Morris and Northern Kentucky. Vandy probably spends more money on one player than Wright State has in its entire NIL budget. Yet, here we are.
- UTSA of the American Athletic Conference stunned mighty Texas, the No. 2 seed overall, beating the Longhorns not once, but twice, in the Austin Regional. Want to know the beauty of this? UTSA lost its best pitcher and its best everyday player to the portal last year. The shortstop went to Arizona State. The pitcher went to – you guessed it – Texas. UTSA coach Pat Hallmark, asked about the players who left said this: “We’re not here if those players are still here. We’re here because they left. … If they want to get in the portal, get in the portal. We’ll go after the next guy.”
- A record 13 SEC teams made the tournament. Only four advanced. And one of those, LSU, had to rally from behind to beat Little Rock in the championship game after losing to Little Rock the day before. Little Rock of the Ohio Valley Conference entered the tournament with a losing record and an RPI of 243.
The guess here is that legions of college baseball fans, disgusted with what the transfer portal and NIL have done to college athletics, will find themselves pulling for teams such as Murray State and UTSA as the tournament continues.
More than likely the eventual champion will come from the Big Boy leagues. Such powers as Arkansas, LSU, Tennessee and Florida State still remain. They all host Super Regionals. They have all the advantages.
Murray State?
Wouldn’t that be something?
