Okay, so I’ve given myself two weeks to do my usual post-college baseball season ritual of going into the desert, wander around aimlessly and trying to clear my head from this 2009 season. But now I’m back.

Paul Mainieri, tired but triumphant, after LSU won the national title.

In the next few days I’ll do some short reviews of the season and talk about some of what happened and what were the bigger stories from the past few months of our beloved sport. We’ll start here with the best and worst storylines for the 2009 season.

I think you’ll dig it.

.
THE FIVE BIGGEST SUCCESS STORIES OF 2009

1- PAUL MAINIERI, LSU Head Coach
Leaves the Golden Dome and makes a champion purple and golden home.

You have to put this guy at the top, just like last year you would’ve had to have Fresno State at the top of any success stories list. But the reason I don’t have “LSU” at the No. 1 slot is because that program has been there many, many times. But as for coach Mainieri? Nobody deserves it more. Great guy. After taking the big risk of going from the comfort of 40-win seasons at Notre Dame to the pressure cooker of going to succeed the guy that couldn’t succeed Skip Bertman (that would be Smoke Laval), this title has to be mighty satisfying. In year three of the Mainieri Project, he brought the bayou boys back to the promised land. Props my man.

.
2- BRANDON McARTHUR, FLORIDA
Pure C.L.A.S.S. indeed.

The Lowe’s Senior CLASS Award Winner has overcome much more than most college baseball players. Having had to recover from a vicious random attack while outside a night club a couple years back, McArthur still wears the scars of the numerous stitches on his head underneath his baseball cap. He ended up missing an entire year of baseball, but in this, his sixth year at UofF, Brandon hit .338 at the dish and carried a 3.21 GPA in criminology. He was also named to the SEC honor roll four times in his career.

.
3- VIRGINIA
The Cavs finally bust through.

Behind the leadership of head coach Brian O’Connor, the Omaha area native became THE story of the CWS as he returned to the Mecca of College Baseball after playing there with Creighton in 1991. But the undercurrent story was that Virginia was able to finally get through the Super Regional round – at the expense of another perennial shortcomer Ole Miss – and made its first appearance in Omaha in school history.

And nobody had a tougher road than the Cavaliers, having to give Stephen Strasburg his first loss of the season, then beating No. 1-ranked UC Irvine on its home field and going to Oxford to win two games in front of 10,000+ rabid Rebel fans every game.

And by the way, that’s why I would give my vote for national coach of the year to Coach O’Connor.

.
4- MIKE GILLESPIE, UC Irvine Head Coach
The old war horse leads his new team to the top of college baseball.

Sure, the 2009 post-season wasn’t what Coach Gillespie and his Anteaters were hoping for, but during the regular season, Skip led his new school to No. 1 in the national rankings for six straight weeks in the latter stages of the regular season. The Anteaters finished the season at 45-15, their third-highest ever win total and also hosted a Regional at Anteater Park for the first time in school history (well, first time in Division I school history).

.
5- THE SEC
The Southern monster conference was back big-time in 2009.

To be honest, there were some lean times recently for the SEC, like having six of the 10 teams to go 0-2 in Omaha from 2003 to 2007 and seeing only five teams make the post-season in 2007. But things started to turn around in ‘08 as Georgia nearly won it all and LSU ousted Rice in unforgettable fashion.

Then came 2009.

Forget the RPI and Boyd Nation rankings of the conference, there were lots of other big time steps made toward returning to their dominant ways for the SEC. First, they regained the national title crown (thanks LSU) and the conference also saw one of its teams make it to Omaha by winning on the road (thank you Arkansas). Plus, of the eight teams to make the Big Dance, six made it to the title round of the regionals and four of those won their way to the Super Regionals. There was only one 0-2 performance (Alabama).

.
Five Other Success Stories Worth Noting:

- Conference USA.
The perennially underrated conference had all three NCAA teams (East Carolina, Rice and Southern Miss) win their Regionals. And USM going to Omaha meant that C-USA has had a team in Omaha for eight of the last nine years, including five straight.

Southern Miss continued Conference USA's tradition of showing up huge in the post-season.

- College World Series TV ratings.
ESPN should take note of the growth here as they announced this year’s CWS was the most-watched in history. The average of 1.45million households that tuned in was 33% better than 2008.

- North Carolina making the CWS again.
Mike Fox is making it look so easy, with his Heels fourth straight trip to Omaha. I don’t think people realize how impressive that is.

Mike Fox has made Omaha a yearly expectation in Chapel Hill.

- The State of Kansas.
Both Kansas State (4th place in the Big 12 and 43-18 overall) and Kansas (5th and 39-24 overall) made it to the championship rounds of the Regionals and finished above Texas A&M, Baylor and Oklahoma State in the Big 12.

- Stephen Strasburg, San Diego State pitcher.
Having the San Diego State stud flinging the ball at 100+mph, getting all that draft attention and leading the Aztecs back to the NCAAs for the first time since 1991 was great for the college game. He was a good ambassador for the sport in 2009.

.
.
THE FIVE BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENTS OF 2009

1- THE NCAA SELECTION COMMITTEE
A bunch of mid-major reps mistreat a bunch of mid-majors.

The most disappointing thing with the committee’s exclusion of deserving teams like Rhode Island, Dallas Baptist and Eastern Illinois is that, other than committee chairman Tim Weiser (Kansas State A.D.) and Pat Murphy (Arizona State coach), the rest of the committee was comprised of mid-major representatives. How did the mid-majors get so screwed then? C’mon guys.

Rhode Island got jobbed out of an NCAA bid, mostly for being a Northern school.

.
2- ESPN’S TREATMENT OF OUR SPORT
I love you, I love you not.

Don’t get me wrong, ESPN has done a great job for a couple of decades now when it comes to televising the College World Series. For that, I am forever grateful. But my ambivalent feelings turn south when it comes to ESPN’s use of talent in the booth, lack of knowledge of our game and lack of college baseball presence on the website during the regular season.

if they paid more attention to the sport during the weeks following the Final Four (at the least), we wouldn’t have such blatantly bad mistakes in their coverage in Omaha. But again, the good news is hopefully the much-louder voices of discontent that raised the rhubarb here in June were heard all the way back in Bristol, Connecticut.

.
3- THE PAC 10
Just too much youth and the Southern Pac 10ers are still laggin’ behind.

Mark Marquess told me during Stanford’s late-season trip to USC that the league lost so many top-rated pitchers from 2008 that you KNEW this was going to be a down year with so many youthful arms on the mound. Still, getting just three bids and seeing two Northwest teams (Washington State and Oregon State) finish in the top three. The Southern teams in this conference need to get off the slide here.

.
4- THE WEST, IN GENERAL
As you know these things go in cycles, so this won’t last. But…

Just 10 NCAA bids for teams west of the Pecos this year (TCU would technically make 11 since the Frogs are in the Mountain West, but geographically they are East of the Pecos River). Of those 10, only two of them won their regional – both ASU and Fullerton who advanced to Omaha – and half of them went out in two or three games.

The Pac 10 a three bid league? The WCC not getting San Diego or Pepperdine to the big dance? The defending national champs Fresno underachieving in ‘09? Irvine getting ousted in its home regional despite being No. 1 in the country? This was not vintage western baseball.

.
5- FLORIDA STATE AND OLE MISS
The Super Regionals aren’t so super again.

Dammit! Mike Martin and Mike Bianco are two of the nice guys in college baseball, but their post-season bugaboos are becoming an albatross. Martin’s Seminoles DID make the CWS last year, but were ousted in two quick games, keeping him winless in Omaha since 2000. This year, his charges lost a home Super Regional for the 3rd time this decade and for the 6th time overall since 2000.

Bianco’s frustrations are much worse. I went on a Jackson, Mississippi radio show right before the CWS and told the listeners there “it’s only a matter of time for Bianco and his team.” But I’m sure that’s becoming white noise to the Rebel faithful by now. In a strange twist of stat, Ole Miss lost a Super Regional for the fourth time in the last five years, three of which have come at home and after they had taken a one game-to-none lead on their opponents.

.
Five Other Disappointments Worth Noting:

- The Big 12 in NCAA tournament play.
The top conference in Boyd’s ISR rankings saw only one team (Texas) out of the eight that got NCAA bids make it out of the Regionals.

- The Brazos Valley.
Texas A&M was pre-season No. 1 and Baylor had a veteran team. Both teams tanked, relatively speaking. Hell, taking it a step further, even SWAC favorite Prairie View A&M finished dead last in the West Division at 9-15.

- The Big 10 in NCAA tournament play.
Indiana was the hot team according to a lot of writers (including myself) but went out in two straight. And Ohio State’s 37-6 loss at Florida State left a black eye.

- The New CWS Stadium Having A Name Like T.D. Ameritrade Stadium.
It’s just never good when a faceless, emotionless corporate giant insists on turning a once tradition-filled sport and slapping its cold name onto a stadium or an event as pastoral as the College World Series.

- Coppin State’s return to winless.
The Eagles went 0-29 this year, putting them on a 36 game losing skid going into 2010.