187: Conference entropy
Some thoughts on conferences using college baseball as an example, plus Carolina's arm barn.
The 2026 NCAA baseball tournament begins Friday with 64 teams, spread across 16 Regionals, playing at campus sites.
In many ways, college baseball’s tournament has felt more pure than its counterparts in basketball and football. I’m not sure that’s the case anymore.
This year, the NCAA selection committee seeded the teams 1-32. It meant every 2-seed in a Regional is seeded in addition to the Regional host.
It doesn’t appear the seeding is a strict “snake” or the team seeded 17th doesn’t have to match the team seeded 16th overall. This hints at the longtime idea or rule that teams from the same conference cannot play in the same Regional.
This idea is obsolete in an era of bloated, coast-to-coast mega-conferences. Take a look at the SEC as an example. 12 of the 16 members of the SEC received a bid to the NCAA Tournament. Out of those 12 teams, there were 19 missed matchups between those 12 tournament teams.
The same thing is true for the ACC, Big 12, Sun Belt, and Big Ten. The only two leagues that received multiple bids and all tournament teams played each other are Conference USA (Jacksonville State, Liberty, Missouri State) and the Big West (Cal Poly, UC Santa Barbara).
Take a look at the data below:
Seven SEC teams are hosting a Regional this weekend. Four others are locked in as 2-seeds, forcing the committee to scatter those teams across the other nine Regional sites.
Tennessee and Ole Miss never played Auburn this season. Arkansas didn’t play Texas A&M. If they didn't play in the regular season, why can't they share a Regional site?
Because it just means more?
To be fair, this isn’t only an SEC problem. It’s true for North Carolina and Wake Forest in the ACC, or Coastal Carolina and Southern Miss in the Sun Belt.
But the SEC commands the attention given the strength of all its baseball teams. It’s been a strong league for a long time. The league even had eight teams in the 2006 NCAA Tournament.
The massive influx of television money changed the energy of college sports, and with it, brought entropy.
College sports is in a state of chaos. Some call it a crisis, but I once read that a crisis is where danger meets opportunity. I don’t know if there is a way to “fix” this entropy without radically changing the system.
Maybe college baseball teams need to start playing 45 league games and only 10 non-conference games? After all, 75 percent of an SEC team’s college football season will be in conference play.
Or maybe we need to blow up the model entirely and allow programs to belong to different conferences for different sports. Why couldn’t North Carolina play SEC baseball, but join the Big Ten for field hockey?
Of course, we could march towards a Super League or just have the SEC and Big Ten break apart too.
One thing that does feel reasonable is that the rules established when conferences had fewer members should not apply today.
If two teams from the same conference aren’t even guaranteed to play each other in the regular season, there is no reason to keep them apart in the NCAA Tournament.
Isn’t the entire point of competition to have these teams play each other?
Carolina’s Arm Barn
A couple of weeks ago, we wrote about the pleasant surprise of Caden Glauber on North Carolina’s pitching staff. Carolina remains undefeated in games in which Glauber has made an appearance on the mound this season.
Glauber is one of four Carolina pitchers who make up a talented staff. Jason DeCaro, Ryan Lynch, and Walker McDuffie all made All-ACC teams this season.
The story of Carolina’s pitching staff this season is one where not all four pitchers are performing at a high level at the same time. One thing that is interesting to track for collegiate pitchers is usage and efficiency.
There are tons of stats to assess a pitcher’s ability, but what I find most useful is how many pitches it takes for them to get outs. So, let’s take a look at the efficiency by month of the season for Carolina’s arm barn using pitches per out.
Glauber has led Carolina as of late. The ACC Freshman of the Year has pitched at least three more innings than anyone else on the staff in the month of May, and he’s done so more efficiently than all three at around 5 pitches per out.
It’s been a rough go for Ryan Lynch as of late. Lynch leads the team in innings pitched with 77 total, which is 10 fewer innings than ace Jake Knapp collected entering the NCAA Tournament last season. Consider that Lynch has recorded nine fewer outs than Glauber in the month of May while throwing 37 more pitches. The sophomore has pitched into the fifth inning just twice in his last six starts.
DeCaro is the only one of Carolina’s primary arms to keep his pitches per out under 6.0 in every month this season so far. The junior has pitched at least into the fifth inning or longer in four of his last six starts.
This chart is probably a bit misleading for a reliever like McDuffie. The sophomore has appeared in 31 of Carolina’s 57 games this season. He has pitched in back-to-back games five times over the past three months.
Carolina is the fifth overall seed in the NCAA Tournament and it’s hosting a Regional for the third consecutive season. Whether Carolina makes it all the way to Omaha will depend on this quartet of arms, and here is hoping all four perform at the same time, so we can update this chart for the month of June.
That’s it for this week. Big thanks to pearatings.com, which made it easy to grab a full slate of games and put together the NCAA Tournament chart.
As we head into summer, you’ll probably find less frequent posts from me in this newsletter. I’m busy trying to be a good dad. I witnessed the toddler peel three bananas at once today, all while not eating any of those bananas. That sort of feels like college sports as of late.
My plan is to work on some offseason projects around college hoops and college football over the next three months. As a start or a soft launch, the 2026 college football schedule is loaded on cfbtxt.com.
🤟Enjoy the baseball and stay cool in this soupy weather 🤟