In college baseball, the SEC is widely seen as the premier conference for baseball. The South, in general, is often seen as the premier region. However, Oregon Ducks head coach Mark Wasikowski recently pushed back against that, advocating for the West Coast.

Wasikowski, a California native who has been the head coach at Oregon since 2020, has coaching experience around the country. That’s given him perspective and helped him to advocate for those programs and players.

“Yeah, they’re good,” Wasikowski said. “People don’t get it. There’s really good baseball on the West Coast.”

Things like analytics can color the public’s views on a conference or region. Right now, nine of the top 10 teams in the RPI rankings come from the SEC or ACC. That includes the top five teams all being from the SEC. In the entire RPI Top 25, only three teams, including Oregon, come from the West Coast. Despite that, Wasikowski pushed back on that way of judging programs.

“They grumble about RPI and this that or the other,” Wasikowski said. “And you just go shoot. These guys — every club that we’ve played, I’ve heard about RPI this, RPI that. Yet, two of the teams that we’ve played in non-conference — we played four teams in non-conference. Oregon State one of them. The other three teams were two teams that are winning their league. In our non-conference strength of schedule is now hanging around 10 in the country. I think that’s a credit to a lot of West Coast schools. These guys are good, and they’re hanging around the middle part of their league. It’s hard out here on the West Coast.”

Still, by most rankings, the SEC and ACC dominate the discussion. The latest D1 Baseball Rankings have 10 SEC teams and five ACC schools. In total, there are six schools ranked from the West Coast, spread across four different conferences. Notably, every team ranked from the Big Ten comes from the conference’s West Coast additions. The West Coast teams in the Big Ten also make up four of the top five teams in the conference standings.

“There’s really good people and really good players,” Wasikowski said. “And I think that’s why the Southeastern Conference and maybe some of the other leagues have tried to hijack a lot of West Coast kids to go out there to that part of the country, because they see how good the baseball is out here.”

Wasikowski has been a head coach at two stops, Purdue and Oregon. Since getting to Oregon in 2020, he’s made the NCAA Regional all four years the postseason was held and has made the NCAA Super Regional in each of the last two seasons. So, there has been success for Wasikowski at Oregon. However, the College World Series hasn’t been won by a West Coast school since Oregon State in 2018.

In all of that, Wasikowski doesn’t know exactly what makes West Coast baseball. However, he did make sure to emphasize that the people are special.

“I don’t know. There’s just a lot of good players. There’s a lot of good teachers. Not saying there aren’t in other parts of the country. My career’s been all over the country, I guess,” Wasikowski said. “But my time that I spent on the West Coast, I have a lot of respect for all the coaches out here. Coach [Eric] Valenzuela for Saint Mary’s is a tremendous coach.”

Oregon wraps up the season series against Washington and Iowa. There, the Ducks look to build momentum for the postseason.

Nick Saban is adding another job to his resume.

The ESPN “College GameDay” analyst – and former Alabama coach – is expected to co-chair President Donald Trump’s commission on college sports, ”The Athletic” is reporting.

The report comes not long after The Wall Street Journal reports Saban urged Trump to get involved in NIL discussions. Per the Journal:

“Trump met with Saban on Thursday night when he was in Tuscaloosa to deliver the University of Alabama’s commencement address. Saban talked about “NIL” deals with Trump, telling the president how he believed the influx of money had damaged college sports.”

The Journal, citing people familiar with the meeting, reports Trump agreed with Saban and would look at crafting an executive order. In addition, Saban proposed “reforming” NIL, saying it is causing an uneven playing field.

According to The Athletic, the other co-chair will be a “prominent businessman with deep ties to college athletics.”

Yahoo Sports first reported Trump’s plans to form a commission focused on college sports.

Mark Heim is a reporter for The Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Mark_Heim. He can be heard on “The Opening Kickoff” on WNSP-FM 105.5 FM in Mobile or on the free Sound of Mobile App from 6 to 9 a.m. daily.

Nate Oats appears to have landed another early-season non-conference test for Alabama basketball, and it comes with a trip to The Big Apple.

If you haven’t been paying attention, the NIL deals we are seeing in college athletics have started to cause friction between schools and the donors who are being asked to give money to help fund the NIL programs. For Charles Barkley, he made it clear on Thursday morning that the return on investment is not good enough for him to waste his own money on. 

What we have seen over the past few months in college athletics has been a free-for-all when it comes to players trying to reset the market from an NIL standpoint. We’ve got players receiving anywhere between $6-$8 million for a single season of basketball, which just goes to show you how much some are willing to spend to win immediately. 

For NBA legend Charles Barkley, an Auburn alum, it sounds as though he has told the folks at Auburn to stop asking for donations when it comes to the basketball program and putting together a roster to compete for a Final Four. 

Appearing on the Dan Dakich show, Barkley had some pretty strong words about how he chooses to spend his money, and who he would rather donate to, rather than a college athletics program like Auburn. 

“I just gave ten million dollars to HBCU’s, that stuff is way more important to me,” Charles Barkley noted to Dan Dakich. “I just gave million dollars to ‘Blight’, in my hometown of Brimigham, to rebuild houses. That stuff is way more important to me than joining the cesspool that is college athletics. We’re such a shitty country, Dan. We’ve ruined college athletics, and I don’t wanna even get in that cesspool. 

“This notion that you have to come up with tens of millions of dollars to pay kids to play basketball, and have them be free agents every year and transfer to another school and get more money every year. Like, we don’t even get to do that in the NBA. Can you imagine if players in the NBA got to be free agents every year? I’m not opposed to players getting paid, I want to make that clear. But, this notion we gotta give college kids tens of millions of dollars a year, and basketball is the worst because you’re only gonna get a great player for six months. I don’t even see how you’re gonna get the return on investment.”

While he might have enough money to rebuild an entire community, Barkley is not going to just waste his fortune on a player who is only looking for a payday. 

Obviously, this is not the case for other boosters in college athletics, but if Auburn is not cutting down the nets at the end of the season, it’s hard to justify spending that much money to help build a roster. 

Charles Barkley Makes Valid Point About NIL’s Return On Investment

The problem that we are seeing right now in college athletics centers around boosters or alumni who have given money in the past finally realizing that it’s a poor investment. Some schools have enough big-time donors that are willing to give money to see their team succeed. 

But, the problem is that there will only be one team at the end of the season that will raise a trophy. So, the return on investment is clearly not worth it to some, including Charles Barkley. If we’re honest, Barkley does enough for Auburn by being around the program, or finding a way to name-drop the Tigers every chance he gets on ‘Inside The NBA’. 

AUBURN, ALABAMA – MARCH 04: Head coach Bruce Pearl of the Auburn Tigers celebrates with Charles Barkley after defeating the Tennessee Volunteers at Neville Arena on March 04, 2023 in Auburn, Alabama. (Photo by Michael Chang/Getty Images)

From a marketing standpoint, Auburn gets free advertisements from one of the most influential people in the sport, and sometimes it comes when college basketball is in their offseason. So, when it comes to giving money to Auburn for a few players that could help them have a chance to make an NCAA Tournament run, it’s just a waste of money in his eyes. 

“If I give a guy three or four, six or seven million dollars, I’m not sure how I get my return on investment if he’s only going to be at my college for one year, and you’re probably not going to win the championship,” Barkley said. “So, the NCAA, they’re a bunch of idiots and fools. They have ruined the sport. I don’t know how you put the toothpaste back into the tube. 

“So no, I’m not doing that. I prefer to give it to stuff that’s important and significant to me.”

Guess what? He’s right. 

While there are plenty of high-dollar boosters that are willing to spend a few million dollars a year to help build a roster for their favorite team, it all comes down to how much it’s actually worth to a person. 

Clearly, Charles Barkley is not handing over his hard-earned money to a player that might be on campus for a year. And at the end of the day, he might love Auburn, but he doesn’t love them enough to waste his own money. 

“Hey, I love Auburn, I do. I’d do anything for Auburn, within reason. But I’m not gonna give Auburn millions of dollars so we can be good in football or basketball. That doesn’t help my life in any capacity. And let me tell you something, black and broke in any states. Guam, District of Columbia, all fifty states. I never meant to be poor and black. That does not work.”