Column: IU’s baseball run worth watching in boring summer days

It has often been said that the summer months are the most monotonous, dull stretch in sports.

Such is typically the case with IU students, many of who leave campus for the summer with nothing but dancing visions of Hoosier basketball permeating their collective subconscious.

It is, perhaps, the only member school of the Big Ten Conference that values one sport so much more than all others.

And that should make students here on this campus feel quite guilty considering the astronomical ascent IU baseball has made in the past two weeks.

If you weren’t aware, the Hoosiers became the first Big Ten Conference team to earn a berth to the College World Series since 1984, and did so after a season in which IU Coach Tracy Smith and his team accrued a slew of honors.

They won the regular season conference championship, conference tournament championship and earned the right to host a regional at Bart Kaufman Field.

The Hoosiers’ Big Ten Conference Tournament championship was the first won by the team since 2009.

Following a sweep through the regional, the Hoosiers travelled to Tallahassee, Fla., for the super regional and defeated the favored Florida State Seminoles at Dick Howser Stadium.

By way of those two victories, the Hoosiers earned their first-ever trip to the College World Series.

If you’ve been tuned into ESPN to watch the Hoosiers in their first two College World Series Games, you’ve seen the rather pleasant showing of crimson and cream in the stands. How many of those fans in attendance are students is an undeterminable question, though the fan turnout has been nothing short of spectacular to see.

It isn’t often that IU athletics are represented on a national stage, as the basketball Hoosiers are the only team consistently playing in front of a national television audience.

And for the players themselves, playing in the College World Series is the reward of a lifetime. For some, it will be the last hurrah wearing the cream and crimson uniforms. They should feel proud for the tremendous way they have represented IU.

This team might go down in the history books as the best baseball team the school will ever see.