What's going on with college baseball streaming?

The first few weeks of the college baseball season are often filled with complaints about FloSports, production quality and sometimes no stream at all.

With paid subscriptions here and live stat feeds there, it seems frustrating to grow the game in Division I when accessibility is the main reason most fans can't access it.

Never mind that national television is out the window for most of February and early March.

A Top 10 clash between No. 1 UCLA and No. 7 TCU had one game broadcast on Fox Sports 1, but the other two were hidden behind a paywall.

The game of the year up to this point, between the top-ranked UCLA Bruins and No. 4 Mississippi State Bulldogs, had little mainstream national coverage, plus its stream could only be accessed on FloSports.

Understanding the difference between college football, men’s college basketball, and college baseball is like comparing apples to oranges to pears.

Despite this, college baseball still deserves a little more love for its numbers during the College World Series, pulling in nearly $1 million for the title games.

Coverage of the bulk of the season is still split among alternate conference networks, making most games inaccessible to fans at high cost.

Yes, even after dishing out an arm and a leg, not all campuses even have live video streams for every single game.

The biggest guilty party here is those who host invitationals and multi-team events. In games that the host team does not play, those games are sometimes not broadcast on their respective networks, such as with Wake Forest in the past.

It's optional to cover non-conference contests, mainly due to streaming conflicts with other campus sports that day, such as basketball.

Saturdays are often the worst day for college baseball streaming, as schools must deal with this conflict.

Richmond, Davidson, and Charleston Southern are some teams that have had to cut their Saturday streams and either “sandwich” their live video options (Friday and Sunday) or have only one day of streaming.

It doesn’t help that weather conditions aren't exactly ideal, leading to postponements and cancellations that prevent broadcasting games during doubleheaders.

As more teams begin conference play, the problem takes a different form.

The Northeast Conference streams its games for free on NEC Front Row; however, this weekend, Wagner will only broadcast one of its three contests against FDU there.

The SWAC has historically been flexible about whether its teams stream games, though Bethune-Cookman’s home matches are free on YouTube.

Conversely, Alabama State used to hide its home games behind a paywall. Florida A&M currently doesn’t have a streaming option available for its baseball schedule.

The conference did, however, make a change in the offseason by moving the SWAC Digital Network to a website called SWAC TV, further proving the need for free streaming in college baseball.

The America East Conference has some games for free on AE TV online, but some teams in the conference have also had theirs on ESPN+. Sometimes, it would be these two platforms showcased on the same weekend.

The Big West has home games on ESPN+ as well, however…

Hawaii has chosen not to do so this weekend for its home conference opener series against Cal Poly, opting instead for a radio-only broadcast on The New 1420.

Why would anyone watch two games starting at 11:35 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on the weekend anyway?

Most other mid-major conferences are on ESPN+, except for the Big East, which is on FloSports.

The ACC has ACCNX, the Big 12 has ESPN+, the Big Ten has Big Ten Plus, and the SEC has SECN+.

Three of the four can be accessed under an ESPN streaming package, with the Big Ten as the odd one out.

This problem will continue so long as national television does not provide as much coverage of college baseball.

Bryan Portney is a second-year student majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, email bep5295@psu.edu.