The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or in the case of sport, how often they seem to circle back around to the familiar.
Turn back the clock to 2007.
Oregon State was completing a back to back run to national titles at the old yard in Omaha. Rosenblatt Stadium was abuzz with Beaver fever and at the same time in disbelief that the powerful North Carolina Tarheels, laden with eventual big league level talent, had been denied the crown by Pat Casey’s upstart bunch from the northwest for a second straight year.
Here we are, a decade later and those same two teams have returned to glory, sitting 1-2 atop the baseball world heading into this season’s championship run.
Will history repeat itself in 2017?
There was a time when the newly minted National Championship Series simply meant Corvallis colliding with Chapel Hill as a rite of summer passage, east coast versus west coast with everything on the line. For the first time since the mid-to-late 2000’s, the potential exists for this to ring true once more.
Oregon State has lost just four games all season, making the Pac-12 conference slate look all to easy this go around. North Carolina dropped just one weekend series in the powerful ACC. When national seeds were announced on Monday, these two familiar foes were once again consensus number one and number two selections respectively.
Only time will tell if we’ll be treated to further editions of the riveting drama that was their highly competitive championships battles from days gone by. Only the unfolding story across the next month of baseball will reveal if Omaha’s streets will once again be filled with heels of tar and rivers of black and orange.
This much we know, however, fans of both programs can relish a tournament return. Happy days are here again, including at least the potential for a renewed clash in the midwest summer heat.