Texas head coach Jim Schlossnagle proposes changes to the college baseball postseason

With the recent developments in both college football and basketball pointing towards an expanded postseason, we’ve heard from numerous head coaches in both sports about their opinions on the subject matter.

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Texas’ own football head coach Steve Sarkisian made his thoughts on the postseason and many other topics clear when talking to USA Today earlier this week, while the media has not had a chance to talk to Texas MBB coach Sean Miller on the subject.

But with college sports changing so rapidly, and rule changes such as the implementation of ABS in the SEC championship and potentially a five-year eligibility standard, Inside Texas asked Texas baseball head coach Jim Schlossnagle for his opinions on the college baseball postseason.

“I’d like our postseason to look different,” Schlossnagle said, while adding that he’d like to see the regular season start date pushed back, “I think our postseason, if we had 32 Best two out of threes, followed by 16 Best two out of threes, followed by eight best two out of threes, then you would truly get the best teams in Omaha, because your postseason would mirror your regular season, versus a regional is nothing like the regular season.”

As it stands, the college baseball offseason is as follows: 64 teams are selected into regional play, where the 16 highest seeds host three other teams in their home ballpark.

The four teams play a double-elimination bracket, with a winner advancing once all three other teams have been eliminated twice. This can take anywhere from 3-4 wins for a program.

Then, the winners from the eight highest seeded regionals host the winners of the eight lowest seeded regionals in the Super Regional tournament. Supers are played in a Best-of-three format, with the first team to win two games advancing to the College World Series.

The CWS is then a double elimination bracket, but when the final two teams have been whittled down, the championship itself is a best of three (Bo3).

Lots of moving parts, right?

This has been the format since 2003, with the bracket looking something like this:

The problem that Schlossnagle has is with the regional setup.

Teams play Bo3 weekend series’ all season, but once the postseason starts, they’re placed into a different system and tournament style that forces them to play more games against different opponents to come out on top. Teams usually have to use openers or fourth starters, and they have to gameplan far differently from the regular season.

This can lead to upsets, like what happened to the Longhorns last year hosting UTSA, and it has generally more variance than the system he has proposed.

His system would mirror the NCAA basketball tournament, with teams playing a Round of 64, 32 and 16 against a singular opponent. The first two rounds would be put in place of the regional, while the super regional, or ’round of 16′ would stay the same. The eight winners of the Ro16 would advance to Omaha.

With Texas’ current projection as the No. 6 seed in the Austin Regional via D1Baseball, Texas is mocked to host Boston College, Texas State and Oral Roberts.

In Schlossnagle’s proposed format, they would play a Bo3 against Oral Roberts in the first round, then a Bo3 against the winner of BC vs Texas State in the second, then the winner of the Florida State grouping in the third round to qualify for Omaha.

This gives a clear advantage to the regional hosts who wouldn’t have to worry about one of the No. 2-3 seeds in their region, in Texas’ case, the 25th and 37th- 40th best teams in the nation.

Schlossnagle believes he isn’t the only one in favor of making changes to the season’s start time and the postseason, but acknowledges that there may be bigger topics in the sport right now.

“I think there’s a lot of voices, but I do think pushing the season back could be a good thing, and then restructuring the postseason, I think, would be awesome, Schlossnagel said.”

Schlossnagle also added that he is in favor of moving the MLB Draft earlier in the year.

As it stands, the draft happens after the transfer portal has fully opened, and teams are well on their way through their signings and roster building. That has burnt teams all over the country, but especially Texas in years past, where the Longhorns signed two star OFs who both opted to stay in the 2025 MLB Draft.

Schlossnagle would prefer the draft to happen directly after the Super Regionals (or Ro16) so that teams have a much clearer image of who will be on their team and who won’t as they approach the transfer portal.