It’s been a fantastic baseball season for the Big 12 conference. With eight teams making the Field of 64, the Big 12 has tied its record for teams in the NCAA Tournament. Despite that, not a single Big 12 team is hosting a Regional.
The Kansas Jayhawks are one of those Big 12 teams heading to the NCAA Tournament. While head coach Dan Fitzgerald recognizes there are plenty of teams around the country deserving to be a host, he also admitted that he’s got questions about the Big 12 not getting a host site.
“Yeah,” Dan Fitzgerald said. “I’m not on the committee. Wish I was. That would make this a lot simpler. I don’t know all the dynamics of it, but when you look at eight teams in the NCAA Tournament, in the third toughest conference in the country, and the gauntlet that we all have to go through playing each other, it’s shocking to me that we don’t have one.”
There were several Big 12 teams who Fitzgerald pointed to as possible hosts. However, it was Arizona, and not any of them, who won it, which he attributed to a major reason why they fell out of a position to host.
“Now, I think it points to the parity inside the league where the league champ, us sweeping them — I think if West Virginia wins the Big 12 Tournament, they host. I think we probably host if we win it, and TCU clearly hosts if they win it. I thought TCU was 100 percent gonna host. I actually thought some of the comments,” Fitzgerald said. “Reading about potential host sites last night, I kind of rushed past that one, going, ‘TCU’s obviously gonna host.'”
In total, the SEC had eight teams who are going to host a NCAA Regional. The ACC had the next most, with three hosts. The Sun Belt and Big Ten had two each. Then, Independent Oregon State rounded out the hosts.
“But, yeah, very surprising. And, at the same time,” Fitzgerald said. “When you look at all 16 hosts, it’s hard to think of one you’d take out. They’re all incredibly deserving. I was in the Missouri Valley Conference at DBU for a long time, and we did host. There was a year where we hosted and Missouri State hosted in 2015, and that’s similar with Southern Miss and Coastal [Carolina]. Both incredibly deserving. Hard to say UCLA shouldn’t.”
Dan Fitzgerald does see a fix to deserving teams not hosting. There would just have to be a major change to the NCAA Regional round format, making it 32 best-of-three series, instead of 16 four-team groups.
“Now, the solution to it is Mike Rooney‘s plan of 64 teams in the first round being 32 hosts with a two of three series and then you move to 16,” Fitzgerald said. “And then you move to Omaha, which makes complete and total sense. It is an odd sport that you play a weekend series the entire year and then you get to this time, you’re like, let’s do a four-team tournament. So, I do think that hopefully, our sport does evolve because you think about if there are 32 host sites this weekend, the excitement that that brings to college baseball would be amazing.”
Kansas is heading to Arkansas for the Fayetteville Regional. Along with the Razorbacks, Creighton and North Dakota State round out that Region. The winner will go on to play the winner of the Knoxville Regional.
