How does the College World Series work?

Answer 1

The WBC happens every four years, right before the start of MLB. The WBC is set up in several diffrent "pools" in which four teams are in. From that point on, each round in the WBC, it is double elimination, which means that if you lose twice in the same round, you are done in the WBC.

Answer 2

The NCAA College World Series is final two rounds of the NCAA Division I baseball tournament.

Before the tournament begins, 16 sites (usually on the campuses of baseball teams that are certain to be selected to participate in the tournament) are selected to host "Regional Tournaments". At around this same time, the 31 (?) Division I baseball conferences conduct their respective conference tournaments. The winners of these conference tournaments receive "automatic bids" to play in the tournament. (Note, a few conferences don't have tournaments, but the "conference champion" - the teams with the best win-loss ratio - in conference games receives the automatic bid for that conference.)

At this point, the NCAA names the "top 8 national seeds", and ranks them 1-8. These 8 teams are assigned to different regionals so that none of them can meet each other in the first round. (In fact, though there's no written rule, it is always the case that these 8 teams are hosts of their respective regional tournaments.) Then each of these 8 regional with a national seed is matched up with one of the other 8 regionals for the second round, before the first round is played, so that none of the top 8 seeds can face each other in the second round either. In 2009, the National Top Eight Seeds were: 1. Texas, 2. Cal State Fullerton, 3. LSU, 4. North Carolina, 5. Arizona State. 6. UC Irvine, 7. Oklahoma, and 8. Florida

After the host sites, national seeds, and regional pairings are established, an NCAA committee begins selecting teams to complete the 64-team tournament field. Each conference has one automatic berth, so these 31 teams are already in. Also, any team that is hosting a regional is in (though, in many cases, they also have the automatic berth for their respective conferences). Depending upon how much overlap there is between the automatic berth holders and the regional hosts, there are 17 to 33 additional teams that must be selected for the tournament. The selection process is undertaken by an NCAA Selection Committee. A lot of different factors are considered, including win/loss ratio, head-to-head competition, conference record, non-conference record, record against "good teams", even performance in earlier years (a "history" of baseball excellence will sometimes get a team into the tournament despite a very poor showing in the current year - to wit, Oklahoma State in 2009). The selection is often controversial, with several teams feeling they "deserved" an "at-large" bid, but not getting one. (Note that, if a team is hosting a regional, but did not receive its conference's automatic bid, the team is an "at large" participant. In fact, they're not technically "in" the tournament until the selection committee formally selects them, though that's a formality at that point. No regional host without an automatic bid has ever been denied an at-large bid. However, it is fairly common for a host team to not be the number-one seed in its own regional, though that did not happen in 2009.)

Once the 64 teams are selected, the Selection Committee assigns each of them to a regional tournament. There are 16 regional tournaments, so there will be 4 teams in each. An attempt is made to actually live up to the name "regional tournament" by assigning teams to regionals that are geographically close to them. But it doesn't always work out that way. In 2009, the Virginia Cavaliers had to travel to California, and the Minnesota Golden Gophers had to travel to Baton Rouge, for example.

Within each regional tournament, the four teams are "seeded" or ranked 1-4. Usually, the host team is given the 1 seed, but this is not always true.

The regional tournaments begin in late May or early June, with half of them beginning on a Friday and the other half beginning on Saturday. Each regional tournament is a "double-elimnation" tournament, meaning teams must lose two games to be eliminated from the tournament. In the first round of each tournament, the 1 seed plays the 4 seed (game 1) and the 2 seed plays the 3 seed (game 2) . In the second round, the first-round winners play each other (game 3) and the first-round losers play each other (game 4). At the end of the second round, one team has been eliminated with an 0-2 record, while two teams have 1-1 records, and one team is undefeated at 2-0. The two 1-1 teams play each other (game 5), with the loser being eliminated with a record of 1-2 and the winner improving its record to 2-1. The 2-1 teams then plays the 2-0 team (game 6). If the undefeated team wins, the regional tournament is over with the (now 2-2) team being eliminated and the (now 3-0) team being the champion. If the 2-1 wins game 6, its record improves to 3-1, and it must face the (now 2-1) team again in game 7. If game 7 is played, the winner will be the champion. (Note that winning your first two games is the key to winning the tournament. If you lose one of the first two games, you will have to win 3 more games in 2 days (for a total of 5 games played in 4 days) to claim the championship, and most teams don't have enough decent pitching for that. On the other hand, if you win your first two games, you only have to win one more game (total of 3 games in 3 days), and even if you don't have any good pitchers left, the other team is usually in much worse shape by that time. Plus, even if you lose your third game, you still get one more chance, whereas the other team has to beat your twice. The statistics bear out this theory. Of the 16 regional tournaments in 2009, 13 of the teams that started 2-0 won their regionals, with 10 of them going undefeated. Only 3 teams rebounded from losing one of their first two games to win the tournament.)

After the 16 regional tournament championships are decided, the remaining teams face each other in 8 "Super-Regional" tournaments. Each super-regional pits two regional-tournament winners against each other in a best-of-three series. The pairings were already decided before the first round began. For example, in 2009, the winner of the Atlanta regional was destined to play the winner of the Gainesville regional, regardless of who won each regional. It happened that the favorite (and host) of the Atlanta regional, Georgia Tech, did not win the regional, and Southern Mississippi took its place. But whoever had won the Atlanta regional would still have had to face Florida, which won its regional, in the Super-Regional round. National top-8 seeds who win their regionals always host the Super-Regional. However, if a top-8 seed fails to win its regional, the NCAA has to decide who, between the winners of the two matched regionals, will host. It is not automatically the winner of the regional in which the top-8 seed played. For example, in 2009, UC Irvine, a national top-8 seed, lost its regional to Virginia. This regional was matched with the Oxford Regional, which Ole Miss, the favorite and host, won. The committee had to decide whether to allow Virginia or Ole Miss to host the Super-Regional. Ole Miss won the decision (but Virginia won the series). The super-regional tournaments begin one week after the regional tournaments, again staggered with half of beginning on Friday and half beginning on Saturday. Each super-regional tournament is a 3-game series, with the first team to win 2 games advancing to the College World Series.

The College World Series begins the following Friday, at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Nebraska. The 8 remaining teams are divided into 2 brackets. Actually, the division into brackets is pre-determined by the regional in which a team competed. Assuming the national top 8 seeds all win their regionals and super-regionals (which never happens), the brackets will be divided thusly: Bracket 1 - Seeds 2, 3, 6, and 7; Bracket 2 - Seeds 1, 4, 5, and 6. If a national top 8 seed fails to win its regional or super-regional, its place is taken by the team that won the super-regional the national top-8 seed would have played in. For example, Arkansas beat national Oklahoma (seeded 7th nationally) in the regional round, then went on to beat Florida State in the super-regional round, thus making it to Omaha. Arkansas "took over" the national 7 seed, "replacing" Oklahoma in the seeding scheme.

The format of the College World series is essentially two double-elimination tournaments (one for each bracket), with the winner of each advancing to a best-of-three championship series, similar to the regional and super-regional rounds. The within-bracket games alternate daily between brackets 1 and 2 through the first 6 days.

Bracket 1 begins play on Friday (one week after these teams began their super-regionals), with national seeds 2 and 7 (or their respective replacements) facing each other in game 1, and seeds 3 and 6 (or their respective replacements) facing each other in game 2. Bracket 2 begins play on Saturday with the 4 and 5 seeds (or their respective replacements) facing each other in game 3 and seeds 3 and 6 (or their respective replacements) facing each other in game 4. Monday returns to bracket 1, with Friday's losers facing each other in game 5 and Friday's winners facing each other in game 6. Then Tuesday goes back to bracket 2, with Saturday's losers facing each ofther in game 7 and Saturday's winners facing each other in game 8. At this point, two teams have been eliminated, four teams are 1-1, and two teams are in the "driver's seat" at 2-0. The two 1-1 teams in bracket 1 play each other on Wednesday in game 9, with the loser being eliminated. The two 1-1 teams in bracket 2 play each other on Thursday in game 10, with the loser being eliminated. This leaves four teams, two of which are still undefeated at 2-0, and two of which are 2-1. The two remaining bracket 1 teams play each other in the first game on Friday (game 11), while the two remaining bracket 2 teams play each other in the second Friday game (game 12). If the undefeated team wins game 11 or 12, it wins the bracket, eliminating the other team, and goes on to the championship series. If the undefeated team loses, the same two teams play each other again on Saturday (in game 13 or 14), with the winner advancing to the championship series.

Once the bracket winners are decided, the two teams take Sunday off (or Saturday and Sunday if they didn't have to play on Saturday. The championship series begins the on Monday. This is a best-of-three series, with games on Monday, Tuesday, and (if necessary) Wednesday. The winner of this series is the College World Series Champion, aka National Champion.

The College World Series and NCAA baseball tournament were not always formatted this way. In the early days, there were only four teams in the CWS, with those teams selected by an informal and non-standard series of "regional tournaments". More recently, there were 8 regional double-elimination tournaments with 6 teams each (for a total of 48 teams), and the CWS being a straight double elimination tournament (with no "championship round"). At some point, the NCAA bowed to pressure from CBS (which was kind enough to broadcast two CWS games, including the championship game, each year for a few years) and divided the CWS into two double-elimination brackets, with the two bracket winners facing each other in one winner-take-all game, regardless of how many losses each team had at that point. This was necessary to get CBS on board because they didn't want to broadcast a game that might be the championship game, depending on who won it. While CBS was still broadcasting CWS games, the field expanded to 64 teams, the regionals were held to 4 teams each, and the super-regional round was added, but the championship remained a one-game, winner-take-all affair. Up to this point, seeds in Omaha were not pre-ordained, but were decided after all 8 teams had qualified. In 1999, CBS got out of its contract to broadcast CWS games, after two consecutive years of the two championship game participants being from the same conference (the SEC in 1997 and the Pac 10 in 1998), leaving the ESPN family of networks (which had already been showing all the games except the two CBS had) with sole broadcasting rights for all CWS games. ESPN didn't have as much pressure to get ratings, so they were more willing to work with the NCAA on tournament format, and the NCAA took advantage of that, first pre-setting the national seeds, then, in 2003, going to the current system, with a three-game championship series between the bracket winners.