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It's almost that time of year again...get ready to sit on pins and needles to see where the Dirtbags will be playing the first weekend in June. For the uninitiated, and those of us (present company included) who are memory challenged, I'll go through some of the factors and rules that affect that decision. You can find the answers yourself in the 2005 Division I Baseball Championship Handbook [pdf]. The bylaws referred to in that Handbook are in the 2004-2005 NCAA Division I Manual [pdf]. The latter is 504 pages long. My day job is as an attorney. If I had to pour over that thing all day long, I'd find another job! But I digress.

Here's some important dates:

May 20: Deadline for schools to submit proposed budgets to host Regionals and Super-Regionals.
May 29: Regional sites are announced on ESPN at approximately 12:15 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time.
May 30: Teams, Regional sites, and pairings are announced on the ESPN2 selection show, beginning at 8:30 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time.

June 3-6: Regional tournaments. This year, some Regionals will be Friday-Sunday, and some Saturday-Monday. UPDATE: Reader Niall points out that the Friday-Monday setup is not to stagger the starts. Rather, if there is a need for a Game 7, it will be played on Monday. In the past, it would have been played on Sunday night.
June 10-13: Super-Regional tournaments. Like last year, some Super-Regionals will be Friday-Sunday, and some Saturday-Monday.
June 17-26 or 27: College World Series (CWS) at Omaha, Nebraska.

The first step in the progression to the CWS is the selection of Regional sites and teams, and their seedings. 30 teams receive automatic bids as Conference champions. 34 teams are selected at large. Here are the "official" factors that the selection committee considers for at-large selection:

Ratings Percentage Index (RPI). I discussed this issue here, and here. Boyd Nation of Boyd's World writes about RPI here. It is not supposed to be the only deciding factors. The Handbook states that: "The RPI is an additional tool used in the evaluation of at large teams."

Regular-season conference standings and/or conference post-season competition. It does make a difference whether you win the conference!

The committee can consider comparing data on individual teams such as overall record, Division I record, overall RPI, nonconference record and RPI, conference regular season and tournament results, road record and RPI, record over the last 10 games of the season, record against teams with RPIs 1-25, 26-50, 51-100, 101-150, and over 150, head-to-head competition, and common opponents' records. In other words, anything can be considered!

There are 16 Regionals, each including 4 teams. The 4 teams are seeded 1-4. Each Regional has 1 #1 seed, and in 8 of them the #1 seed is also a National Seed as selected by the committee (and the National Seeds are ranked 1-8). Each Regional with a National Seed #1 is paired with a Regional without a National Seed for purposes of a Super-Regional matchup. As much as possible, teams are assigned to Regionals "using the closest possible geographic consideration."

A couple of rules apply when it comes to teams from the same conference in post-season play. First, teams from the same conference cannot be assigned to the same Regional. And, second, teams from the same conference that are #1 seeds in a Regional cannot be paired to meet in a Super-Regional.

Here are the criteria considered in selecting the Regional hosts:

1. They try to disburse the Regionals around the country geographically, as much as possible.

2. The host school must guarantee at least $35,000.00, and 75% of net receipts, to the NCAA.

3. Lights are preferred.

4. Crowd control and behavior in prior years is considered.

Interestingly, the selection of a host school's team as a #1 seed is not listed as either a required or preferred criteria. As a practical matter, though, most host sites will be assigned to #1 seeded teams. Each year there seem to be 3 or so Regional host sites where the host institution is a lower seed - usually a #2. Typically, this is because there are #1 seeds that did not bid to host (as in the case of Arizona State last year), bids are deemed inadequate for some reason, or the NCAA committee needs to select a site elsewhere for geographic reasons. There are certainly cynics out there (and I'm not saying they are either right or wrong) who will tell you a host bid will be granted to a lower seeded school because the NCAA can count on making a lot of money.

The Dirtbags chance to host is within their grasp. All they need to do is just keep winning. Simple, right!