It’s that time of the year again. One of the best times in the world and honestly one of my favorite times of the year. Yes, it’s the start of baseball season.
As I get ready to watch plenty of games over the opening week and remember to set the remaining positions on my fantasy baseball team, one question crosses my mind every year: why can’t the University of Idaho bring back America’s Favorite Pastime to campus as an NCAA team?
Intercollegiate baseball was played on campus up through the 1980 season.
The team’s most successful stretch came within the first six years of being in the Big Sky Conference in the 1960s. The Vandals were able to win four titles in six years. Two of those teams even made it to the College World Series.
But by 1974, baseball in the Big Sky was discontinued. Many teams, including Idaho State, decided to discontinue their teams while only a few teams, including the Vandals, ended up joining the Northern Pacific Conference. The conference consisted of the big teams outside of the Pac-8.
The Vandals would go on to face teams like Portland, Portland State and Eastern Washington until 1980 when the baseball team was axed. UI cited budget issues as the reason for discontinuing the team.
Since then, baseball has not been a big deal for the Vandals, although UI does have a club baseball team. They compete against teams from Idaho, Montana and Washington and they have a chance to advance every year to the National Club Baseball Association World Series. But that’s no College World Series.
Now there are quite a few things that require logic when a person talks about having a baseball team on campus.
The campus certainly does not have a suitable facility to house a NCAA baseball team, not to mention they still probably don’t have the funding from the state nor the scholarships to do so.
But if UI could find the funding for the sport, who knows what kind of success the team and potential the team could bring to campus.
Fans that have followed the College World Series over the last few years know that a WAC team in 2008 went on an improbable Cinderella run to win the National Championship. That team was Fresno State, who is now in the Mountain West Conference.
It wouldn’t be overnight success, if the Vandals were able to start a new collegiate team. They would have to take a few years to develop, plus they would have to find a suitable conference to join that wouldn’t require too much travel around the country.
That again could possibly be a lot to ask for from the athletic department, but for many people on campus, a baseball team would be a welcome addition to the sports already playing at Idaho — especially when the team doesn’t have to have big names to be successful.
Rick Clark can be reached at [email protected]