Sixteen collegiate baseball teams will host regionals in the NCAA Tournament from Friday, May 29 to Monday, June 1. Hosting a regional gives one team home field advantage in a double-elimination postseason bracket over three other teams. Not only does hosting have an immediate on-field impact, it also provides the program and town with additional revenue.
After the series loss against Arkansas, Ole Miss needed to go 4-2 in their last six SEC games. They stayed on that pace with a series win over No. 9 Texas A&M. Now, No. 15 Ole Miss can secure a top 16 national seed with two wins this weekend on the road against No. 18 Alabama.
Two more SEC wins would put them at 16 for the regular season, which, coupled with their No. 3 strength of schedule and No. 13 rating performance index, should earn the Rebels a host bid.
D1Baseball projects Ole Miss as the No. 18 seed overall, just two spots shy of hosting, and a No. 2 seed in the Corvallis, Ore., Regional. They have Oregon as the No. 16 seed and Kansas as the No. 15 seed.
For a program like Ole Miss Baseball, hosting is expected. After the Rebels won the national championship in 2022, they did not qualify for the NCAA Tournament in 2023 or 2024. Getting a host bid for the second consecutive year would mark a return to normalcy for the program.
“If you’re us, if you’re Arkansas, if you’re Mississippi State, if you’re LSU, some of these schools that are traditional baseball schools and (have) a lot of tradition there — great stadiums, great support — your expectation is to host regionals and our hope is to go win two and do that again this year,” Ole Miss Vice Chancellor for Intercollegiate Athletics Keith Carter said in an interview with The Daily Mississippian on Monday, May 11.
Last year, Ole Miss Baseball was one of two Rebel sports to make a profit (football was the other sport). With $11,742,871 in revenue and $10,561,988 in expenditures, they turned a net profit of $1,180,883. They made $486,178 from hosting a regional last year.
“It absolutely does (help from a money standpoint), especially when you have a stadium like ours, and we’re going to sell out and all those things,” Carter said. “It’s not a huge windfall, but it’s great for us as Ole Miss. We do make several $100,000 on that, maybe a little more than that.”
The Oxford Regional helped Ole Miss Baseball stay in the green last year and doing it again this year will have the same effect.
Ole Miss fans showed up in droves to the 2025 Oxford Regional last year. It was the highest-attended regional in the nation.
“We sell 8,200 season tickets. Those folks love postseason baseball. The expectation is for us to host regionals,” Carter said. “We feel like, from an NIL perspective, we support it and resource coach (Mike Bianco) and coach (Carl Lafferty) and put together a great roster. I think our goal every year is to host. Sixteen (teams) get to host and we feel like we should be one of those.”
Not only do all those people show up and support the program by attending games, they also impact the local economy.
“It’s great for Oxford. When you’ve got another weekend of hotels full and restaurants full, it helps the economy and all that,” Carter said. “We love bringing out folks back for another weekend or two.”
Last year, prior to the tournament, Oxford Mayor Robyn Tannehill estimated that postseason baseball could bring in $16 million and 100,000 people.
While the Rebels were knocked out of the postseason in their regional last year, nine of the 16 hosts advanced to super regionals. Five of those teams went to the College World Series (three played other teams who hosted regionals, and one lost to a non-host team).
“It’s not going to happen every year; we know that, but that should be the expectation,” Carter said. “I certainly know that’s coach (Bianco’s) expectation. Sometimes you fall one game short, and if you look back at ‘22, we didn’t host in ‘22 and ended up winning the national championship.”
Hosting a regional certainly does not guarantee postseason success, but playing at your own park with your fans helps. The Rebels ended the regular season 27-7 at home.
Ole Miss Baseball will continue their chase to host on Thursday, May 14 at 6 p.m. at Alabama. Game two is Friday at 6 p.m. and game three is Saturday at 2 p.m. SEC Network+ will broadcast the games.
