The Big 12 Conference baseball tournament (sometimes known simply as the Big 12 tournament) is the conference championship tournament in baseball for the

Big 12 Conference The Big 12 Conference is a college athletic conference headquartered in Irving, Texas, USA. It consists of ten full-member universities. It is a member of Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for all sports. Its ...

. Going back to the original format abandoned in 2005, the tournament consists of two separate four-team double-elimination tournaments. The winners of each of those tournament face each other in a one-game match for the championship. The winner receives the conference's automatic bid to the

NCAA Division I baseball tournament The NCAA Division I Baseball Championship is held each year from May through June and features 64 college baseball teams in the United States, culminating in the eight-team Men's College World Series at Charles Schwab Field Omaha in Omaha, Nebr ...

History

The Big 12 tournament was first played in

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...

All Sports Stadium All Sports Stadium was a stadium located at the State Fairgrounds in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It had a capacity of 15,000 people and opened in 1961. History While it was primarily used for baseball and was the home of Oklahoma City 89ers, it ...

Oklahoma City Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, a ...

, before moving to

Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark opened in 1998 in downtown Oklahoma City's Bricktown Entertainment District, replacing All Sports Stadium. It is the home of the Oklahoma City Dodgers, the Triple-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers Major League Bas ...

the following year. The tournament has been played in Oklahoma City each year, save for 2002 and 2004, when the event was played in

Arlington, Texas Arlington is a city in the U.S. state of Texas, located in Tarrant County. It forms part of the Mid-Cities region of the Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan statistical area, and is a principal city of the metropolis and region. ...

, at the

home park Home Park is a football stadium in Plymouth, England. The ground has been the home of Football League One club Plymouth Argyle since 1901.

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

's Texas Rangers. Over its 10-plus year history, the tournament has had three distinct formats.

1997–98

' In 1997 and 1998, the top six teams were invited to play in a double elimination tournament with no byes for any teams. The format mirrored the regional round of the NCAA tournament at that time.

1999–2005

' Beginning in 1999, the tournament expanded to eight teams and followed the format of the

College World Series The College World Series (CWS), officially the NCAA Men's College World Series (MCWS), is an annual baseball tournament held in June in Omaha, Nebraska. The MCWS is the culmination of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Divisi ...

. It consisted of two 4-team

double-elimination A double-elimination tournament is a type of elimination tournament competition in which a participant ceases to be eligible to win the tournament's championship upon having lost ''two'' games or matches. It stands in contrast to a single-elimina ...

brackets, with the winners facing off in a final championship game. The format mirrors that of the tournament format used by the

Southeastern Conference The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is an American college athletic conference whose member institutions are located primarily in the South Central and Southeastern United States. Its fourteen members include the flagship public universities of ...

, which continues to use this bracket.

2006–2010

' In 2006 the tournament moved to a round-robin format. In this format, two pools of four teams play each other with the winners of each pool playing a one-game championship match. This format ended in 2010.

2011–present

Starting with the 2011 Big 12 Conference baseball tournament, the tournament went back to the format used from 1999 to 2005.

Champions

By school

(As of the end of the 2017 tournament) *''Italics'' indicate that the program no longer sponsors baseball in the Big 12. *Former Big 12 member Colorado did not sponsor baseball after 1980

Records

Team batting Team fielding Team pitching Individual batting Individual fielding Individual pitching

References

2007 Big 12 Tournament media guide

External links

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