The Women’s College World Series is set to get underway on Thursday as college softball’s top eight teams play a double-elimination style bracket to determine a champion for the 2024 season.
With three teams from the conference, the Big 12 is set up very well to compete for another national title after Oklahoma has won each of the last three.
However, there are those out there who truly believe the Sooners have an unfair advantage by playing in Oklahoma City, and thanks to Texas head coach Mike White, the talk on that topic is already starting to heat up.
“I’d love to see [the Women’s College World Series] rotate eventually, but probably not in my tenure as a coach,” White said on Tuesday, per Austin American-Statesman. “We get it, but it is a huge advantage, obviously, for Oklahoma.”
White’s top-seeded Longhorns are 2-2 against the Sooners this season, but the most recent matchup was at Devon Park in Oklahoma City. Despite winning the regular season series two games to one, Texas’s matchup against the Sooners in the Big 12 Championship was different, though, with Oklahoma prevailing, 5-1.
The WCWS’s location in Oklahoma City certainly gives Oklahoma an edge when it comes to the crowd, but is it the reason they’ve won three straight national titles? No. Oklahoma State has made five straight WCWS appearances and has yet to make a Championship appearance.
This narrative, which has been picked up and kicked all over the place in recent years, is honestly a bit lazy at this point. It’s beginning to feel a bit more like an excuse than a real reason for other teams’ struggles when facing the “home team.”
