Three Reasons You Should Watch the College World Series

5 hours and 40 minutes….

Nope, that isn’t the amount of time I had to wait for a delayed plane to fly out to LAX. It also isn’t the amount of time it took for this years Academy Awards to finish.

5 hours and 40 minutes is the amount of time it may have taken for people around the nation to realize that the College World Series is one of the most exciting events on the yearly sporting calendar. Every year people flock to the 5th wonder of the world, Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha, Neb. for some of the best baseball in the world. This is the time for schools that aren’t very big in other sports to get on the athletic map. During the CWS, we can see Long Beach State, Cal State Fullerton, UC-Irvine and even the Rice Owls. We also see the schools that are just good at everything else as well; Florida State, UNC, Texas and the list goes on. This argument is made every year with college football and college basketball, with people arguing why college athletics are better than professional athletics.

I am here to make a statement, the College World Series NEEDS to be a bigger event nationally. I’m talking filling out brackets, watching in bars and maybe even throwing in Gus Johnson to announce the games.

I won’t make any exceptions. The CWS may in fact be one of the most underrated athletic events in the nation, maybe even the world (right next to Olympic curling…that is for a later article).

Here are my top reasons why EVERYONE should be watching the CWS…

1. Excitement
You can’t tell me that, if you watched SportsCenter or even saw the Cal-State Fullerton/UC Irvine game, you didn’t get goose bumps or think to yourself, “Wow, what an ending!” Just like a lot of the other collegiate athletics (namely March Madness and the ever popular BCS games) the College World Series is full of exciting moments. Other collegiate sports are often compared to their professional counterparts, i.e. the Major Leagues. In comparing College baseball to MLB baseball, both have their fair share of excitement. Let’s even compare the playoffs of both leagues. Last year, the World Series pulled its worst ratings since…well…the year before. A big reason for this drop off? The 1994 players strike. Since 1995, the World Series ratings have gone up and down…mostly down. The CWS has always been storied among college athletics pundits, but it is somewhat becoming more popular on a national level. There is a certain excitement of watching Rice play Texas that is missed watching the Yankees play the Devil Rays. The major leagues have their ever storied rivalries (Red Sox/Yanks….Twins/White Sox…Cubs/White Sox…A.J. Pierzynski/whatever teams he used to be on) but every game of the College World Series is a rivalry. Not due to geographical reasons or historical reasons, but the fact that every single kid on those teams doesn’t want to go back home empty handed. There are no shoe deals or contracts that guarantee reward even if they lose. All there is for reward is the national title or nothing at all.

2. History
The first College World Series was held at Hyames Field at Western Michigan in 1947. Yale took on Cal in a best of three series in Kalamazoo, MI. I know that the first question that comes to mind is, “Who was Yale’s first baseman?” Well, maybe not the first question. The young first baseman for the Yale Bulldogs was none other than our 40th President, George H.W. Bush. In an interview with ESPN.com, President Bush noted that

“We thought about it a lot and talked about it in the locker room. A lot of us on the team were veterans and we had come back from the war, so maybe that made it a little less apprehensive. On the other hand, it didn’t deduct from our enthusiasm and our desire to win…”

The CWS only lasted there for 1 more year (Wichita, KS for the ’48-49 season) after the Yale/Cal series. It was then moved to Omaha to Johnny Rosenblatt stadium. Other than Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park, there may not be another current baseball stadium that is as historical as Rosenblatt stadium. The MLB World Series is held at different parks pretty much every year, which gives it some variety. Yet the CWS has been held in the same place every year since 1950. This makes Omaha somewhat of a Mecca for baseball fans across the nation. It’s like going to the same sports bar with your buddies for every celebration or to Grandma’s house every Christmas. There is history oozing out of the stadium and every game that is played there. There are new baseball stadiums built every couple of years now and the history rarely travels with the new stadium. The one thing constant about the CWS is that every year, even with different teams, they all return to the Mecca of college baseball.

3. Emotions/Chill factor

There are many great story lines that surround this year’s CWS. My two favorites deal with UC-Irvine. The first is the fact that their season was nothing near dominating at all. They handled playing Cal-Fullerton mid-season by taking two out of three from them at Fullerton’s stadium but lost two out of three to Cal Poly the following weekend. Seeing this and putting them in the CWS against Texas and Wichita State would normally spell doom. The fact of the matter is that they swept Texas and Wichita State away from California and pushed their way into the CWS. They come off as one of those “teams of destiny” that we always hear about during any playoffs and any level. Their only loss in the CWS was to Arizona State and coincidently enough, as I write this the day after their exciting win against Fullerton, the Anteaters of Cal-Irvine just beat Arizona State and Ollie “Ollie-Oxen Free” Linton had the game winning single in the 10th to vault UC Irvine into an elimination game with Oregon State tomorrow night. The other story of the CWS was between the coaches of UC-Irvine and Cal-Fullerton. Irvine’s coach Dave Serrano used to pitch for Fullerton’s coach, George Horton at Cerritos College.

"The bad news is I had to say goodbye to my mentor, coach, friend, my second father, a guy I love a lot," Serrano said. "That's the toughest part about it, seeing his team eliminated. I wish our win hadn't been at their expense, but we went into this knowing one of us would be happy and one of us would be sad." – UC Irvine coach Dave Serrano (San Jose Mercury News)

There are always those “student becomes the teacher” storylines (often times in football and basketball) but in the CWS it is much more meaningful. So many games are played in a baseball season and emotional moments are extra emotional in the CWS. Serrano, after the game, told Horton that he loved him. HOW MANY SPORTS ARE YOU GOING TO HEAR THIS!? With all of the news about John Amaechi coming out of the closet and Tim Hardaway’s comments, such things may be a touchy subject. This game is so emotional that people don’t even think twice when they hear things like this. Watching the last inning of the UC Irvine/Fullerton game was an 8 on the chill factor scale. Each play was more intense than the next. The instant classic was started with Josh Fellhauer throwing out Taylor Holliday at home, preserving the game for one more batter. Then the .318 average Bryan Peterson came to bat, with the game on his shoulders. His single up the middle gave UC Irvine the win and put a cap on one of the most classic games of the 60 year CWS history.

5 Hours and 40 minutes….how much more do you need?