Not America's national pastime? Not even remotely?

There's a curious silence in the major media when it comes to college baseball.

They love college football. Dwell on it, obsess on it.

Ditto college basketball.

Sweet sixteen. Bowl games. National rankings. BCS National Championship. Traditional rivalries. Cinderella teams. Even recruiting scandals and sexual assaults. All you can read, or watch, or hear, or stomach - day in, day out; in season and year 'round.

But not baseball.

Today, for instance, the finals of the NCAA Division I Baseball World Series will begin. UCLA vs. Mississippi State, in a best of three struggle.

Look for it in the New York Times, for instance. Look hard. I just did, and no mention of it at all. Okay, an occasional AP wire service feed, but nothing about UCLA making the finals, let alone the match-up for the finals. Not even today, with the game scheduled to start in just four hours. No discussion of the teams, or their players, or their chances.

But the Times does have an article in today's paper about how the Wallabies are suffering from three injuries as they prepare for the "all important" second test in the British and Irish Lions series in Melbourne. That's Melbourne, as in, Australia. And I think the game is rugby. Which I've never heard described as America's national pastime ... although perhaps I've missed something the Times editors have grasped?

Not in the Washington Post, which does, however, have an article on the "under 20 World Cup" in Turkey.

Not to the single out the Times or the Post: you won't learn much about the CWS (College World Series, lest you not recognize the reference) from any other major media source, either.

Why is that? College ball has become a major training ground for major league baseball, just as it has for football and basketball? Why the silence?

Strange.



P.S. For the record, I'm rooting for the Bruins ....