One of the best aspects of high-level sports is the general accessibility of the postseason, even to casuals. You don’t need to watch all 18 weeks of the NFL regular season to enjoy the Super Bowl, for instance.
When it comes to college sports, things are complicated a bit by the organizational structure, which features more teams, leagues and quirks than its professional counterparts. Still, the College Football Playoff and NCAA basketball tournament are easy enough for the average fan to consume — so long as you have the mental bandwidth to learn about a Jesuit school from Jersey City with just over 2,000 undergrads whose mascot is a peacock.
But for bat-and-ball sports, you can throw all that out the window. The NCAA baseball and softball tournaments have a jumbled, confusing, often counter-intuitive format that can be confusing for even ardent fans.
It’s also a hell of a lot of fun if you’re able to keep up with it.
With the regional round beginning on the men’s side this weekend and the Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma City underway on the softball side, this is as good a time as any to try to make sense of the whole set-up. So, here’s how it works:
