Titans Say NCAA Isn’t Playing Fair

More than a week has passed since the NCAA passed on a Cal State Fullerton baseball team that finished 34-22, won 10 of its last 12 games and shared the championship of one of the strongest conferences in the country.

Time has healed no wounds.

A week ago, the T-shirts Coach Augie Garrido had printed for his players brought a twisted smile to the face of anyone who appreciates advancements in the field of gallows humor. The back of the shirts featured the word TITANS, riddled with mock bullet holes.

Today, those bullet holes seem more like howitzer blasts, overblown and growing larger with every glance.

No one’s laughing anymore.

In a week’s time, the NCAA playoff field has been pared from 48 to an Omaha-bound eight and Fullerton anger has flared from righteous indignation to full-scale conflagration.

Fresno State, a team Fullerton tied for the Big West Conference championship, qualified for the College World Series.

Cal State Long Beach, a team that finished third in the Big West, a team that finished 0-3 against Fullerton, qualified for the College World Series.

At Fullerton, this qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment.

“That’s the nail in the coffin in my book,” Fullerton Athletic Director Steve DiTolla says. “We’re happy for those teams; it shows the strength of the Big West Conference. But the fact that the co-champions were not invited proves that there’s something wrong with the selection process.”

Closer to the bleeding, Titan players Steve Sisco and Jason Moler told The Times’ Mike DiGiovanna that they boycotted last week’s regionals on the grounds that they couldn’t bear to watch, knowing what they know about Fresno State and Long Beach and what might happen to those teams.

“I didn’t feel like watching the games,” Sisco said. “We’re really upset. We know we could’ve been successful now. This proves to everyone in the nation that we’re one of the strongest conferences around.”

Moler said he spent the weekend in San Diego because, “I wanted to get away. I didn’t even want to see one game. I didn’t look at a paper until (Monday). I didn’t want to listen to ESPN or anything. It was too frustrating, because it should have been us.”

Week-old grapes seem less sour now. By staying home last week, the Fullerton baseball team did more for its reputation, and cause, than it had in 56 regular-season games.

The regional success of Fresno State and Long Beach cast the crime in a new light. It wasn’t so much a Fullerton snub as it was a Big West snub. In the past four years, the Big West has sent six teams to the College World Series--Fullerton, Fresno and Long Beach twice each. Before 1991, Fullerton and Fresno were a combined 67-47 in NCAA regional competition and 15-14 at Omaha.

Who would you rather have in your tournament?

Three teams from the Big West or three from the Sun Belt Conference--South Alabama (43-15), Jacksonville (43-19) and Alabama-Birmingham (27-28 and, yes, that’s no typo)?

Three teams from the Big West or two from the East Coast Conference--mighty Rider (32-14) and mightier Towson State (27-21)?

Three teams from the Big West or four from the Pac-10, including baseball-only loaner Portland (30-17) and Cal (34-25), third-place finisher in the conference’s Southern Division and two-time loser to Fullerton?

Fullerton belonged in the field of 48 from the start, but now more than ever. The Titans were ranked 15th in Collegiate Baseball’s final regular-season poll, meaning that the NCAA selection committee disagreed with Collegiate Baseball 34 times. Now? Fullerton went 4-2 against Fresno and Long Beach and those teams are going to Omaha.

Rider rents a playoff berth, Middle Tennessee State goes at three games under .500 . . . and Fullerton swaps nicknames with Long Beach, becoming an outcast, an NCAA 49er?

So instead of playing baseball, the Titans have been confined to playing post office. Letters are being written by Garrido and DiTolla, by Milton Gordon, the university president. They are being sent to the NCAA.

Some salient questions are being asked.

Shouldn’t the selection process be scrapped once it no longer serves the best 48 teams in the country?

Why does the West have only one representative on the nine-member selection committee?

How can the West receive only five of the 25 automatic playoff berths when teams from California and Arizona have won 18 of the past 24 national championships?

What, exactly, is a Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) and why did it have to ruin Fullerton’s year?

“Our objective is to get an explanation,” Garrido says. “We need to understand what we did right or wrong in the eyes of the committee, because their decision doesn’t seem to fit the logic and history of it all.”

Logic?

“The way it appears to me,” Garrido says, “is that it didn’t seem to matter who we beat. We beat Long Beach three times and that didn’t seem to count and we beat Cal twice at Cal and that didn’t matter. We lost three straight to Stanford and Northridge and that does matter. That’s the problem--what really counts and what doesn’t.”

History?

“I suppose,” Garrido says, “there haven’t been many league champions from the western United States that have been left out of the at-large selections.”

Most of all, Garrido wants to know about the RPI, the NCAA’s mysterious power-rating system. Everyone who plays Division I baseball is affected by the all-powerful RPI, but no one seems to have any idea how or why it works.

“If our RPI is bad, I want to know why,” Garrido says. “We don’t know what the hell the RPI is. They haven’t told anyone who’s asked.”

The RPI is the NCAA’s dirty little secret, but the Titans now know enough to suggest what the NCAA can do with it.

RIP.