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When you think of the Big 12 Conference, what sport comes to mind? Football is the king of college sports, so I wouldn’t blame you one bit if that’s your first answer. Or even if you pick basketball, it’s hard to argue that the Big 12 isn’t the best conference in all of college basketball for the last decade.
Hardly anyone would pick baseball, which is understandable, but I am here to tell you that could change over time. As crazy as it sounds, the Big 12 is one of the best conferences for baseball in the country.
When you look at the sport of college baseball, the SEC has been king and likely always will be for the foreseeable future. But who is second? That’s where the conversation can get interesting.
It’s a battle between the Big 12 and the ACC. And until the Big Ten steps up its game, it’s always going to be between those two. For the last two years, both conferences have had a team in the College World Series, and in some years, multiple teams have ended up in Omaha.
While neither conference has brought home a national championship in the last ten years, both conferences have their fair share of talent. Perhaps no better example of that is what happened this past weekend with the MLB Draft.
Big 12 Picks
We saw a total of 56 Big 12 players get selected, tied for the third-most in conference history. What made it even sweeter for the Big 12 is the fact that all 14 teams had at least two players drafted. Even the worst team (Houston) had four players selected, which is mind-boggling.
While the ACC had 12 more players drafted, keep in mind that it has 16 baseball-playing schools, unlike the Big 12, which has just 14. If you added two more baseball programs to the Big 12, then the numbers would likely be very close to those from this past draft.
I know second place is the first-place loser for some, but being second is better than being third or fourth. For the Big 12 to bring in programs like Arizona and Arizona State was significant because both schools have outstanding baseball traditions.
On top of that, the conference still has name-brand programs like Oklahoma State and TCU, which didn’t even make the postseason this year, which is crazy because the Big 12 still ended up with six teams in the postseason.
UCF and Cincinnati have become respectable programs, while West Virginia and Kansas look like the future of the new-look Big 12 when it comes to the sport. Sure, they may not be the one dominant program year in and year out, but from top to bottom, the Big 12 has depth that not many other conferences have.
We know that in football, the Big 12 gets treated as a tier-two conference. In basketball, we get respect. But I am here to tell you that it’s time to recognize that this conference can compete with anyone in college baseball and should be taken seriously.
