Texas A&M/Tennessee World Series spells out the future for TCU, the Big 12 and ACC

The 2024 College Baseball World Series should unofficially be called, “The Future of Major College Athletics.”

If you are a member of the Big 10 or SEC, that future is awash in a rainbow of pretty colors, mostly green and white.

If you are a member of the ACC, Big 12, Pac-2 or some other conference, that future is scary, expensive and stacked against you. If you are Clemson, North Carolina, and Florida State, don’t worry; you’re fine.

And, of course, if you happen to be Notre Dame, you needn’t worry about a thing for the rest of eternity.

Because it is baseball, the majority of American sports fans were not too moved by this College World Series, even if it not-so-subtly continued to carve out the Wal-Martization of college sports.

Omaha is one of the last places where a school from a non-power conference could win a national title in a major sport; Coastal Carolina’s World Series title in 2016 may be the last time we see one of these championships won by a team outside of “The Club.”

This is one of the reasons why Jim Schlossnagle left TCU in June of 2021 to become the head coach of Texas A&M’s baseball team. A lot of TCU fans, and national observers, were upset/curious why he would take what looked like a “lateral move.”

In his 18-year tenure at TCU, he built the program into a name. TCU baseball came close several times to winning a national title.

The timing of his exit from Fort Worth fit his personal life, and he had an idea of what was coming. Maybe not quite to this extent, but he had enough of a sense to know the odds of winning a national title in the future were much better at A&M.

That was before Texas and Oklahoma left the Big 12 for the SEC. That was before the Pac-12 died, and USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon went to the Big 10.

Congrats to Schloss’ for turning a good job into a great job; in little time he has built a power in College Station, and led the Aggies to the championship series of the CWS, against fellow SEC member Tennessee.

The Vols won Game 2 on Sunday afternoon to force a decisive Game 3 on Monday night.

Major Division I athletics now feels less like the NCAA than it does The BigSECTen. As the NCAA continues to pile up losses in court, the only entity powerful enough to stop this consolidation of wealth in college sports is the very reason we are here today: Network TV.

If ESPN, NBC, CBS and Fox wanted to break up these leagues and spread it out from the Atlantic to the Pacific, an agreement would be crafted by no later than Wednesday. Their interest is rooted in the need to generate the maximum amount of advertising revenue.

They don’t care who wins; they only care a lot of people watch. Because, who wins, is basically the same team.

When the NCAA selection committee included Florida for the 64-team college baseball tournament, people howled in disgust. The Gators were 28-27 in the regular season, and they stole a spot from a deserving mid major, at least. Then the Gators won their way to Omaha.

Don’t be swayed by the romantic revisionist history of how college sports used to be; the expensive sports have always been dominated by the power names. That’s never going to change.

What will change is that that a school outside of The Club has a remote chance to do anything other than a earning postseason spot in anything. TCU winning its way to the 2022 national title game in football may ultimately go down as one of the more impressive feats in major college sports this century. This should not have happened.

To those who say UConn’s success basketball out of the Big East disproves this theory, incorrect. UConn does have a football team, and the Big East’s decision to wisely lean into only basketball and concentrate all of its resources into one sport has paid off.

It’s also the only league to do this.

The increase in the number of teams for the college football playoff and the inevitable expansion of the NCAA basketball tournaments are not about accommodating the mid-majors, the adorable Cinderella teams, or creating parity.

This is entirely about making sure more schools from TheBigSECTen are playing postseason games. The Big 12 and ACC fight, scratch and spend to be a part of this equation in some way.

We knew this was coming, but what we are witnessing in Omaha confirms “The Future of Major College Athletics” is here.