The Cheap Seats: Jason and company sports blog (used to be Tom and Sean's)

Last night the Fresno State Bulldogs defeated the Georgia Bulldogs 6-1 to win the College World Series.  I have to admit that as cynical as I am, I got caught up in all the story lines with this final and it made me feel good to see that at least at the College Level, a huge underdog could actually come all the way to the top and win a title.  What is also interesting to me, is that I could root for Fresno at all based on their horrible treatment of their women's coaches and women's athletics in general. This would not be blog worthy, but book worthy.  In short, Fresno has already lost two huge sexual harassment lawsuits by former coaches for Women's Volleyball and Basketball, yet it does not appear they have learned anything from these expensive lessons.  The administration and athletic department seem to be operating with a 1950s or 1960s mentality towards women's athletics.  Yet, here I am rooting for the baseball team, mostly because they were truly a case of a team that (check off your favorite cliche) did not belong in the tournament, was given no chance to even make it out of the first round, had no business advancing to the CWS, let alone win it, and truly appeared to not know that they were not supposed to be knocking off all of the blue bloods of College Baseball, yet did anyway.

The announcers of last night's game pointed out that the Fresno State baseball team has been on the road since the middle of May, emphasizing how tough it is to win on the road.  This is a perfect set up to make a joke about the city of Fresno, but I'll pass -- for today at least.  Fresno was on the verge of elimination, I believe 6 times throughout the tournament, yet came though and won each time.  No team has ever won the College World Series with as many losses as Fresno had as their record was 47-31.  No #4 seed in a regional had ever won the College World Series until Fresno won it last night.  Probably most important for Fresno, was that no team had ever scored as many runs as Fresno did in the College World Series.  They scored 62 runs in 7 games.  Fresno reminded me of a heavyweight boxer with very little defensive skills, but a powerful punch.  They seemed to be willing to get clobbered many times in order to get their shots in, eventually slugging their opponent into submission.  Seemed a little ironic that they won the title game on outstanding pitching.  I expected maybe a 13-8 score for whoever won instead of the actual 6-1 final score.

The College World Series reminded me of why I still like watching College sports.  Thank you Fresno State.