If you take a look at stadiums for all types of sports across the SEC, its apparent that this conference likes to do things big. Mississippi States Baseball stadium, “The Dude”, Lsu’s Alex Box Stadium, and A and Ms Blue Bell Park offer facilities almost equalivalent to minor league baseball facilities. But OU’s Stadium, While not horrible, is so far behind what some of these other schools are building for a sport that doesn’t even generate a whole of money, if any. And if you were wondering, OU baseball is not a lacking sport at this school. A CWS appearance in 2022 and good seasons that ended in regionals in the past few years shows that the program has great potential. But in a sport like Baseball where the disparity between facilities is larger than a sport like football, having a nice stadium could be a good selling point to future recruits. I mean I’ll even show Oklahoma states stadium compared to ours, a school that is still in the Big 12 but yet their baseball program has only seen success since moving into a new baseball facility where there recruiting is trended upwards ever since.
I mean seriously, its kind of a joke at this point. At least, the baseball program here has received a 10 million dollar grant or donation of some sort from the VP here at OU to improve the stadium and renovate. While this is a pretty large sum of money to make some improvements it might not even be enough. There are some renderings out there that show how they want to extend seating down the right field line and add more stadium seating rather than bleachers to the stands, but even some of the small stadiums in the SEC are all double decker stadiums with large concourses. Just take a look at Arkansas stadium.
And as I think on it more while I’m writing this, all the schools with big baseball facilities have shown a lot of success in the past 10 years. Arkansas is continually shown in the top 10 rankings year after year. Mississippi state is always getting good recruiting classes, along with A and M as well. Texas now which also has made upgrades to their stadium along with some coaching changes is now the current number one team in college baseball. LSU with Alex box is always in the running to make the CWS. Along with Tennessee and Ole miss which both boast some pretty impressive facilities also do very well year after year. So I think the point I can conclude from all this is if you want to play well in college baseball in this decade, just build a big ass stadium. All the good recuits will want to play for a program that the school prioritizes sending funds to, and a bigger stadium means nicer things for the players and the culture around the fans and the students will grow stronger.
