Stacked Deck
A lot of good and valid points being made here. The deck is ridiculously stacked against teams from northern climates. The unfairness built into college baseball right now is quite frankly pathetic. The Big 10 regular season and tourney champ receiving a #4 seed at Fullerton back to back years is silly. I don't care what Illinois and Minnesota's overall records were. Ask CS-Fullerton if they appreciated them being shipped their way as a #4.
It is pretty difficult for a Big 10 team to have much success in the NCAA tournament when they are getting these kind of draws. Just for the heck of it pretend the Big 10 got the same treatment that the '1 National title' ACC gets (I don't count Miami (Fla)'s titles because they were an independent team; Just like I won't count Nebraska as the last Big 10 team to make the CWS). What if Michigan State, Illinois, Purdue, and Minnesota all hosted as #1 seeds and played Navy (#1 seed Virginia's 1st round opponent), Sacred Heart (#1 seed Clemson's), Bethune-Cookman (#1 Florida State's), and Maine (#1 North Carolina's) in their opening round? The Big 10 would do pretty darn good. What is going on right now in my opinion is basically a numbers game. The RPI is allowing the power conferences to receive huge advantages in seeding, hosting, and teams invited. Yeah, they are very good conferences but the top teams in the Big 10 are pretty darn good by the end of the year. I'm pretty confident that the Big 10 would have some Super Regional representatives if the conference received 7-8 bids, 4 host sites, and 4 #1 seeds. If they also hosted the SR round, some of them would break through and reach the CWS. Guaranteed.
Until the RPI system is abolished or changed in such a manner that significantly rewards road victories the status quo will remain. Personally, if the RPI problems are not addressed, I am all for a Northern and Northeastern regional whose winners meet in the SR round for a berth in the CWS. It isn't ideal as it would virtually eliminate more than one team from the cold climate regions of ever reaching Omaha during the same season, but AT LEAST ONE WOULD GET THERE EVERY YEAR!! Based on their RPI as of today, here is how the two regionals would have looked this year:
Northern:
#1 Creighton (RPI 34)
#4 Illinois (118)
#3 Sacred Heart (85)
#2 Kent State (39)
Average RPI 69-->I'm showing this just to show how I balanced out the regionals.
Northeastern:
#1 Connecticut (RPI 35)
#4 Manhattan (111)
#3 Seton Hall (56)
#2 St. John's (53)
Average RPI 64
I used the top 8 RPI northern/northeastern teams that were in this year's tournament to make up the field for these two regionals. I would be pretty confident that the team that came out of the Super Regional could compete with the rest of the CWS. Ask Clemson, CS Fullerton, Arizona, and Texas about some of these teams. Or ask Virginia who St. John's took to the brink at Charlottesville last year with virtually the same team that they fielded this year.
Hopefully something changes because what is going on isn't right. Maybe if Connecticut wins the whole thing changes will be made. They literally were on the bubble before the NCAA field was announced. One could argue that they have as much talent on their team as any team left in the tournament. The Huskies won the Big East regular season by 3.5 games going 22-5 in conference. Their regular season record was 41-17. When that team is on the bubble we've got a very unfortunate situation.