CWS Tickets

List of CWS Teams Grows

Many of the Super Regional games were decided last night as the list of confirmed teams grew from fourto seven.  There is still one more spot available to the winner of the TCU vs. Texas game tonight at 6:00 PM Central.  Texas is heavily favored, and is the number one seed in the tournament, but the Horned Frogs dealt them a 3-2 loss last night on the Longhorn's home turf.

As we mentioned yesterday, there are some very familiar faces that we will see at this years College World Series.  CWS veterans ASU, Cal State Fullerton, and LSU will be back in Omaha this year, the three teams have won a combined 14 championships in the tournament's 62 year history.

Some newer faces will be seen this year for fans who make the trek to the famous Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha.  Virginia and Southern Mississippi are both traveling the road to Omaha for the very first time.  Virginia knocked off Ole' Miss in the Super Regional tournament and look strong coming into Omaha.  Virginia's ace pitcher Matt Packer led the Cavaliers to a 5-1 victory to win the best of three series over Ole' Miss.  Virginia's head coach Brian O'Conner will feel right at home here in Omaha.  O'Conner grew up near Omaha and says he visits here once a year to see family.  I'm sure the whole O'Conner family will be happy to see him this year for a second time.

Southern Mississippi has a similarly intriguing story.  Coach Corky Palmer will retire after this season after a great run with the Golden Eagles who were not expected to make it to Regional play much less win the Regional and Super Regional.  Southern Miss knocked off a highly favored Florida Gators team who has looked shaky at best during the postseason.

North Carolina and Arkansas round out the other seven confirmed teams for the College World Series.  North Carolina has visited Rosenblatt Stadium the last three years but has yet to win a championship.  The Tar Heels were upset in 2006 and 2007 by the Oregon State Beavers who won the championship both times.  Arkansas has been building a strong program in the last few years and looks to make Omaha a regular stop for the end of their upcoming seasons.  The Razorbacks were last in Omaha in 2004.

Familiar CWS Teams Pack Their Bags for Omaha

Fans in Omaha will see familiar faces at the College World Series this year.  So far, four teams have secured spots in the eight team tournament that is set to start June 13th.  The remaining four teams will be decided tonight at Super Regionals across the country.

LSU, Cal State Fullerton, Arkansas, and North Carolina all won their Super Regionals and will make the trek to Omaha.  All four teams have made it to Omaha in the past with Cal State Fullerton making the CWS an amazing 15 times.

The action will begin in Omaha with the opening day celebration on Friday, June 12.  There will be activities for all ages including autograph signing from 10:30 AM to 6:00 PM and Kid's Zone games and activities from 10:00 AM to 9:00 PM.  Disney channel star Mitchel Musso will perform before the opening ceremony in the southeast parking lot with the beautiful backdrop of Rosenblatt Stadium.  During the opening ceremony, fans will enjoy team introductions, a parachute team, and best of all, fireworks!  All of these activities are free to the public.

The College World Series will again be held at Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha.  This will be the second to last year that the series will be held there, the city of Omaha agreed to build a new stadium at the request of NCAA officials if they agreed to keep the CWS in Omaha for 25 more years.  The move to the new stadium is set for the 2011 College World Series.

Fresno State completes unlikely run to CWS title

There have been many Cinderella stories over the years in college sports -- the basketball championship runs of North Carolina State and Villanova in the 1980's always seem to leap to mind.

But for all the great stories of the little guy rising to the top of the heap, none can be matched by the run of the Fresno State Bulldogs, who completed one of the more unlikely roads to the title by beating the Georgia Bulldogs 6-1 in the third and final game of the College World Series championship Wednesday at Rosenblatt Stadium.

The Fresno State squad started the season in a pure funk, losing 12 of their first 20. They had to win the Western Athletic Conference tournament just to get a bid in the NCAA tournament, then entered the toughest regional as a No. 4 seed.

Fresno State held off elimination long enough to win the Long Beach regional, only to find itself on the road in one of the toughest places to play -- Tempe, Ariz. They lost their first game to fourth-seeded Arizona State, then ran off two wins in a row to pull off the upset and earn the trip to Omaha.

Even the road to Omaha wasn't smooth sailing for these gritty Bulldogs. They flew in bad weather and endured a bumpy flight before touching down in Omaha. Once they hit the pavement, though, all this team did was win when it needed to.

And it should be only fitting that the most battered of the Bulldogs, Steve Detweiler, be the man that carried Fresno State to the title. Playing with a completely torn ligament in his thumb, Detweiler smacked a pair of home runs and a double and accounted for all six RBI's to lead his team to the title.

Detweiler's first blast came in the second, as he took a Nathan Moreau pitch just over the wall in right to give Fresno State a 2-0 lead. He would add an RBI double in the fourth and a three-run blast to left in the sixth to put Fresno State in command.

The big cushion was more than enough for starter Just Wilson, who threw 129 pitches on three days rest and went eight innings for the Bulldogs. His only mistake came in the eighth when Georgia's All-American shortstop, Gordon Beckham, hit a solo homer to left field. The round-tripper gave him 28 for the season, tying him with LSU's Matt Clark for the most home runs this season.

It was a great effort by the Georgia Bulldogs to get to the championship series. They dominated their half of the bracket, knocking top-seeded Miami into the losers bracket and finishing the four-team double-elimination part of the tournament undefeated. They won the first game of the series and were in command in the second game before Fresno State made its amazing comeback.

And if you want to put Fresno State's championship run into perspective, consider that they were the No. 4 seed in their four-team regional. By comparison, if the baseball brackets were seeded as they are for the NCAA basketball tournament, Fresno State's seeding would have been the equivalent of a team seeded No. 13 or lower. The lowest seed to win an NCAA basketball championship was Villanova, who was a No. 8 seed when they beat Georgetown in 1985.

It was an amazing finish to what was yet another exciting College World Series, and the end result is one that will capture the imagination of underdogs in every sport for many years to come.

Tournament Results

Saturday, June 14 -- Stanford 16, Florida State 5; Georgia 7, Miami 4

Sunday, June 15 -- Fresno State 17, Rice 5; North Carolina 8, LSU 4

Monday, June 16 -- Miami 7, Florida State 5 (Florida State eliminated); Georgia 4, Stanford 3

Tuesday, June 17 -- LSU 6, Rice 5 (Rice eliminated); Fresno State 5, North Carolina 3

Wednesday, June 18 -- Stanford 8, Miami 3 (Miami eliminated)

Friday, June 20 -- North Carolina 7, LSU 3 (LSU eliminated)

Saturday, June 21 -- Georgia 10, Stanford 8 (Stanford eliminated); North Carolina 4, Fresno State 3

Sunday, June 22 -- Fresno State 6, North Carolina 1 (North Carolina eliminated)

Championship Series

Monday, June 23 -- Georgia 7, Fresno State 6

Tuesday, June 24 -- Fresno State 19, Georgia 10

Wednesday, June 25 -- Fresno State 6, Georgia 1 (Fresno State win CWS championship)

NCAA to keep CWS in Omaha for 25 years

Omaha officials were hoping a new stadium would encourage the NCAA would keep the College World Series in town for 20 years.

They were wrong -- and they couldn't be any happier about it.

Tuesday afternoon, the College World Series of Omaha Inc. organization announced it had reached an agreement with the NCAA that will keep the college baseball tournament in Omaha through 2035. The 25-year deal is longer than what was expected when a memorandum of agreement between the two sides was signed last week. That agreement stated that the College World Series would stay in Omaha for 20 years.

Under the agreement, the lion's share of the revenue generated by the two-week tournament will take care of the city's projected $140 million stadium construction debt. The remaining funds will go to stadium operation expenses and upkeep, reserve funding for stadium expenses and the NCAA.

The Omaha World-Herald reported that the stadium should bring in about $16 million in 2011, the first year the stadium would be used. Of that revenue, $6.5 million would go to construction debt, $5 million would go to the NCAA and another $3.5 million would go to operating expenses. The remaining $1 million would be split between the city and NCAA, with the NCAA receiving 80 percent.

Currently, the NCAA is under contract to hold the College World Series at Rosenblatt Stadium through 2010. Under the current deal, the NCAA receives about $3.3 million from Omaha, so the new deal will be an increase of over 50 percent for the collegiate governing body.

The stadium will be run by the Metropolitan Entertainment and Convention Authority (MECA), which also oversees the Qwest Center, located just southeast of the new stadium site. MECA will work with the NCAA on securing stadium naming rights, which could bring in close to $1 million annually.

Team Feature -- Cal State Fullerton

When you think of college baseball powerhouses, programs like Texas, USC, LSU, Arizona State and Miami leap to mind.

But what about Cal State Fullerton? Sure, they're not near as big as the above-mentioned behemoths of the diamond, but they've got quite an impressive history of success and could be in the mix for a trip to the College World Series once again in 2008.

The Titans, to be honest, can be mentioned in the same breath as Texas, USC, LSU, Arizona State and Miami. In fact, those five teams share an honor with Cal State Fullerton in that each of those teams has won at least four CWS championships in their history.

Cal State Fullerton has been to the CWS 15 times since its first trip in 1975. They've won it all once in each of the last four decades, taking titles in 1979, 1984, 1995 and 2004.

This year, the Titans struggled a little out of the gate, suffering a three-game sweep at Stanford early on and losing two of three to Arizona. But the Titans seem to be bouncing back, having won eight of their last 11 games to head into this weekend's series with Cal State Northridge with a 17-11 mark.

Freshman shortstop Christian Colon earned Big West Player of the Week honors last week after a solid weekend against UC Irvine. He had the go-ahead single in the Titans' 6-4 win over the Anteaters on Sunday as part of a three-hit perforamnce and had six hits during the weekend series. He is one of five Titans to earn conference Player of the Week honors this season.

Josh Fellhauer leads the team in hitting with a .397 avearge and 12 stolen bases, and Erik Komatsu is swinging the big stick with five homers and 23 RBI's, both team-leading marks.

On the mound, Cory Arbiso is 5-2 with a 3.94 earned-run average and has been very impressive with his control, striking out 34 while walking just four.

The Titans have made five appearances in the College World Series this decade, and could be in the hunt for a sixth trip to Rosenblatt Stadium this summer. Get your tickets for this year's College World Series now at Ticket Express -- where no College World Series game is ever sold out.

City, MECA come to terms on agreement

Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey and the board that would operate a new downtown baseball stadium are finally on the same page.

In a joint news conference Tuesday, Fahey and David Sokol, chairman of the Metropolitan Entertainment Convention Authority (MECA) announced that they have come to terms on outstanding issues that were standing in the way of an agreement between the board and city.

While details of the agreement won't be made public for two weeks, the two said that issues regarding parking, traffic and future land use around Qwest Center have been agreed to. The agreement will be made public during MECA's April 14 meeting, at which point the board will vote on whether to approve the proposal.

"Nobody is giving up anything," Fahey said. "We're trying to take advantage of an opportunity to secure a long-term agreement with the NCAA and not harm one of our crown jewels, which is the Qwest Center."

Sokol said the agreement is one that is a win-win for all involved.

"I don't think anyone is being held to a position that hamrs the other," he said.

One of the major hurdles was MECA's insistence that the mayor guarantee that the city would not use eminent domain to take Qwest Center property for any future development. Fahey said state law prohibited him from doing that, but an agreement was worked out so that it would not be a problem for him or future mayors.

"I've said publicly that I'm not going to move forward with eminent domain during my tenure, and we have an agreement in place," he said.

"The lawyers managed to find a way to get through the eye of that needle," Sokol added.

Sokol said he believes there are enough votes on the MECA board to get the agreement approved. If that happens, Fahey said he will take everything to the NCAA later this month to work out a long-term agreement to keep the College World Series in Omaha.

Once an agreement with the NCAA is reached, Fahey will ask the City Council to approve the final proposal.

Coaching legend to retire at end of season

One of college baseball's coaching legends has announced that he will hang up his spikes at the end of this season.

Mississippi State coach Ron Polk is in his 29th year with the Bulldogs and 35th overall as a head coach. He announced last week that he will resign at the end of this season.

Polk has had a tremendous amount of success during three decades in Starkville. His 1,360 wins ranks him fifth among active coaches and is in the top 10 all time. He has been named to the American Baseall Coaches Hall of Fame and is a two-time National Coach of the Year.

He led the Bulldogs to the postseason 23 times, including each of the last five years. Under Polk, Mississippi State has played in eight College World Series. Their trip to Rosenblatt Stadium last year was the team's first since 1998. They also made the journey to Omaha in 1971, 1979, 1981, 1985, 1990 and 1997.

Polk has been critical of the NCAA over recent rule changes, including the switch to a uniform start date. According to an Associate Press story, Polk told MSU athletic director Larry Templeton before the season started that this one would be his last.

Omaha mayor trying to build stadium support

Omaha's mayor is sure of one thing -- the College World Series will be played in a new stadium in 2011.

Now the question is -- will that new stadium be in Omaha? Or will it be somewhere else?

After a week's worth of public forums where a vocal group of people made it clear they don't want to see the College World Series moved from Rosenblatt Stadium, the mayor is going ahead with plans to build a new $140 million downtown stadium located just northwest of Qwest Center.

To do that, he's going to have to get the support of the Omaha City Council, who obviously are in a difficult position having to approve a series of measures that may very well go against the wishes of those they represent.

The City Council will be voting on a variety of measures relating to the new stadium. The first one on the list will be the demolition of a city-owned building near the Qwest Center that would be cleared for future parking space. Eventually, the council will have to approve a measure that would convert two parking lots into the new stadium.

Fahey is meeting with all of the council members to try and drum up support for the construction. Some council members who were on the fence are leaning toward approval, while at least two members remain steadfastly opposed.

Arizona State tops Rivals.com's projected regional list

Rivals.com has projected the 64-team field for the 2008 NCAA baseball tournament, and preseason top-ranked Arizona State leads the list of teams the website says will make this year's tournament.

Three teams that reached the 2007 College World Series are among the website's projected top eight seeds. Joining the Sun Devils are Rice at No. 3 and two-time runner-up North Carolina at No. 8.

A total of 30 schools will earn automatic bids to the NCAA tournament as conference champions. The rest of the 64-team field will be selected base on records and strength of schedule.

Rivals.com sees the 64-team field for 2008, including projected regional host sites, as follows:

(NOTE: top eight seed noted in parenthesis, conference champions in italics)

Tempe (Ariz.) Regional -- Arizona State (1), Fresno State, Pepperdine, Harvard

Coral Gables (Fla.) Regional -- Miami Fla. (2), Coastal Carolina, South Florida, Stetson

Houston Regional -- Rice (3), Texas A&M, TCU, Prairie View A&M

Los Angeles Regional -- UCLA (4), Cal State Fullerton, Minnesota, Lafayette

Austin Regional -- Texas (5), Louisiana-Lafayette, Auburn, Quinnipac

Nashville Regional -- Vanderbilt (6), Clemson, Oklahoma State, Wright State

San Diego Regional -- San Diego (7), St. John's, California, Stony Brook

Cary (N.C.) Regional -- North Carolina (8), Georgia, Nebraska, College of Charleston

Wichita Regional -- Wichita State, Long Beach State, Alabama, Oral Roberts

Columbia (S.C.) Regional -- South Carolina, Wake Forest, East Carolina, Bethune-Cookman

Oxford (Miss.) Regional -- Ole Miss, Florida State, Southern Miss, Jacksonville State

Waco (Texas) Regional -- Baylor, Mississippi State, Creighton, Texas-San Antonio

Charlottesville (Va.) Regional -- Virginia, Kentucky, Tulane, Old Dominion

Corvallis (Ore.) Regional -- Oregon State, North Carolina State, Cal Poly, Manhattan

Tucson (Ariz.) Regional -- Arizona, Louisville, UC-Irvine, Charlotte

Ann Arbor (Mich.) Regional -- Missouri, Michigan, Georgia Tech, Kent State

Regional winners will advance to super regionals, and the eight survivors will play in the 2008 College World Series, beginning June 14 at Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha, Neb.

Mikey C Sez: Intelligence of fans, taxpayers insulted by stadium committee

Let’s get some things cleared up regarding the ongoing debate on renovating Rosenblatt Stadium vs. building a new downtown stadium so Omaha can host the College World Series for the next quarter-century.

First and foremost, let’s do away with the notion that the NCAA is not involved in the stadium controversy. In fact, if you believe the NCAA’s claims that they have nothing to do with the stadium controversy going on in Omaha, you are only kidding yourself.

The NCAA has very deep pockets and the kind of influence over situations that a Mafia don only wishes they had. Every renovation project that has taken place at Rosenblatt Stadium over the past two decades has come at the NCAA’s insistence. More seats, bigger press box, etc. – all came because the NCAA told the powers that be in the city of Omaha they were needed if Omaha wanted to keep the CWS.

Second is the idea that the stadium review “committee” seriously considered renovation of the 60-year-old Rosenblatt Stadium as an option for the future of the home field for the CWS and the Omaha Royals. If you believe for one minute that the committee gave any real thought to the possibility of rebuilding the concourse of the stadium to make it more open and “fan-friendly” – there is a bridge near Brooklyn that I can let you have really cheap.

The stadium oversight committee continues to claim, however, that renovating or rebuilding Rosenblatt was considered and rejected. Why was it rejected? Sorry, folks – it’s going to take two weeks for them to figure out how to spin it in a manner that might be acceptable, for those who want to keep Rosenblatt, to comprehend.

This committee was hand-picked by a mayor that is so locked into leaving his own legacy on the city, and he wasn’t about to put anybody on that committee who has no problem saying, “Yes, Mr. Mayor. Whatever you say, Mr. Mayor.” There is a reason Fahey rejected having anybody from the camp looking to save Rosenblatt Stadium sit on this committee – because they would not be on board with Fahey’s demands to call for a new stadium to be built.

And what about the committee’s proposal? There are more holes in this proposal than a truck full of Swiss cheese. There are so many “details that need to be worked out” in this proposal that one wonders why they even bothered to announce its “findings” in the first place.

Then there is the stadium cost. It started in the $25-$30 million range. Now it’s up to $140 million, and you can count on that number going higher before all is said and done.

And who is paying for this new stadium? Where is the money coming from? If you think the taxpayers in Omaha aren’t paying one penny for this new stadium, I’ll throw in some oceanfront property north of Denver along with that above-mentioned bridge.

All Monday’s news conference did was create a bigger smoke screen that does nothing more than buy the powers that be a little more time to come up with something more concrete that will make the NCAA happy to keep the College World Series in Omaha for the next 10-20 years. In doing so, they have insulted the intelligence of every college baseball fan and Omaha taxpayer who has even the most remote interest in the College World Series.