Can college baseball ever pass women's college basketball one day?

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College baseball just needs to keep a positive attitude and always remember where it came from.

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what?

Here's the thing about womens college basketball. Even though the WNBA exists, womens college basketball is the pinnacle for their sport, which is why rating are infinitely higher for womens college ball compared to the WNBA. It's the only college vs pro sport that's like that. College baseball will never be the pinnacle of the sport of baseball. That said, more and more elite high school players are going to college ever year. The number of drafts picks getting cut in half and the development they receive now in college compared to 20 years ago has a lot to do with it. Many times, you have a much faster track to the majors if you played college ball as opposed to going pro out of high school. Add NIL (for the larger schools at least), college baseball is a much more appealing option for high school players than it once was. So I do expect the college baseball game continue to grow.

As far as ratings, College baseball also has the issue of having the CWS right in the middle of the NBA finals and Stanley Cup finals.

Sadly, it all depends on if ESPN wants to make it a priority.

If they'd rather air a WBB game over an intriguing college baseball game and place the baseball on ESPN8+, then the popularity of college baseball isn't going to grow.

Since ESPN has the WNBA for TV, it is in their interest to show WCBB games then then hope someone will continue watching any of the popular WBB players in the WNBA. ESPN has really reduced their baseball coverage compared to the days of Baseball Tonight airing nightly after SportsCenter.

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Here's the thing about womens college basketball. Even though the WNBA exists, womens college basketball is the pinnacle for their sport, which is why rating are infinitely higher for womens college ball compared to the WNBA. It's the only college vs pro sport that's like that. College baseball will never be the pinnacle of the sport of baseball.

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That's an issue, but not sure how big an issue it is considering men's college basketball and college football have the same dynamic. The flip side for women's sports is that even if they are the pinnacle for that particular sport, there's a pretty hard ceiling there because only so many people are going to watch in earnest an athletically inferior product.

I'm an average dude, and me and a group of similar guys used to play pickup ball on occasion against the UA women's team. Granted, they weren't very good for a D1 team at the time, but it was never competitive. I will never have any interest in watching people worse than me at basketball play basketball unless it's my kid.

College baseball is huge in the SEC and south/southeast in general and thats all the really matters to us.

The biggest issue facing college baseball nationally is simply the time it starts is way beyond any northern fans interest because their teams arent even playing at home generally speaking until sometime in March. They have to go weeks traveling out west and to southern locations just to play games. Hard to be a fan of a team when they cant even play at home for a month of the season to start every single season. As a by-product of that hardly any northern schools invest any money in college baseball, because why would you when you cant even get people to come to games for the first month of the season.

Of the Top 25 teams in NCAA tournament baseball appearances all time, only 2 of them come from northern teams. St. Johns who hasnt been to the NCAAT since after 2018 now. Minnesota who has only been to the NCAAT twice the last 12 years. So both those programs are relatively dead now on the national scene from the north. Michigan, UConn and maybe Notre Dame have more recent success getting in the NCAAT, but historically are pretty low on the totem pole for NCAA baseball still.

The fact that women’s BB is ahead of baseball is one of life’s greatest mysteries.

No. Simply because of the lack of interest in the northern states in College Baseball. I wish ESPN would give College Baseball better coverage though. They provide 10x the coverage to Women's college basketball and softball.

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The fact that women’s BB is ahead of baseball is one of life’s greatest mysteries.

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It’s because ESPN promotes the shite out of WBB and has it on the main channels way more than college baseball.

If they gave each sport an equal amount of exposure I’d imagine college baseball would be more popular

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I know that ESPN conspiracy theories are fun, but June is basically College Baseball Month on ESPN and they plug the games to the moon and back.

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But they don’t plug college baseball all season, which they really have no reason not to from April through the end of the season

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"College baseball is huge in northern Louisiana and Mississippi and metro Knoxville in general and thats all the really matters to us who live in northern Louisiana or Mississippi or metro Knoxville."

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Not our fault ya'll suck arse at everything besides football

I'll enjoy our top 5 basketball and top 10 baseball teams in the meantime