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The Division I Baseball Committee has unveiled a slightly modified schedule for the 2008 College World Series. The event will now start on Saturday, June 14 rather than Friday as in years past, a change aimed at giving teams an extra day to prepare and safeguarding against weather delays in the regionals and super-regionals. The CWS Finals will now begin on Monday, June 23 and conclude on Tuesday or Wednesday, rather than beginning the previous Saturday and concluding on Sunday or Monday. This way, the “if necessary” games are scheduled for Saturday, June 22, making Sunday an off day.

“The new schedule also provides more competitive equity for teams playing in the series, especially for those advancing through the losers’ brackets,” said Dennis Poppe, NCAA managing director for baseball and football.

The new schedule also has the added benefit of putting the CWS Finals games all in prime time on week nights, when ratings figure to be better than they are on the weekends. The more exposure for college baseball’s penultimate showcase, the better.

The NCAA also announced the price of all tickets will increase by $1, and there will no longer be any single-session doubleheaders.

Where does the extra day in duration come from? Have they added an extra off-day in the middle, or are there now days with just one game?

This is better for the teams (especially those fighting through the losers’ bracket), but worse for the visiting fans that attend since it will be an extra day of expenses/vacation time (plus more for tickets with the split admission).

Any thoughts by the NCAA on scheduling a longer break between games (something like 1:00 and 7:00), especially now that they’ll need to c;ear the ballpark between games every day?

Posted by Jeremy Mills | August 14, 2007 at 12:00 pm | Shortcut

Good question. Instead of playing two elimination games on Day Five (which will now be Wednesday), there will be one elimination game on Wednesday and one on Thursday, which will mean an extra day of rest for the teams in the Sunday-Tuesday bracket. In the past, those teams would have to come back the next day and play an elimination game, which gave the teams on the other half of the bracket an advantage in setting up their pitching for the rest of the week and into the Finals.

Game times will remain the same–1 p.m. and 6 p.m. On days when there’s only one game scheduled (Wednesday and Thursday of the first week, and the CWS Finals games), all games will start at 6 p.m.

Posted by Aaron Fitt | August 14, 2007 at 2:31 pm | Shortcut