The 1966 NCAA University Division baseball season, play of

college baseball College baseball is baseball that is played on the intercollegiate level at institutions of higher education. In comparison to football and basketball, college competition in the United States plays a smaller role in developing professional p ...

in the United States organized by the

National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges ...

(NCAA) began in the spring of 1966. The season progressed through the regular season and concluded with the

1965 College World Series The 1965 NCAA University Division baseball tournament was played at the end of the 1965 NCAA University Division baseball season to determine the national champion of college baseball. The tournament concluded with eight teams competing in the Col ...

. The College World Series, held for the twentieth time in 1966, consisted of one team from each of eight geographical districts and was held in

Omaha, Nebraska Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest cit ...

Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium was a baseball stadium in Omaha, Nebraska, the former home to the annual NCAA Division I College World Series and the minor league Omaha Royals, now known as the Omaha Storm Chasers. Rosenblatt Stadium was the largest m ...

as a double-elimination tournament.

Ohio State The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best public ...

claimed the championship.

Season headlines

* March 7 – Tulane's Stephen Martin became the first

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

to play a varsity sport in 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 o ...

, debuting in the Green Wave's season opener against Spring Hill. In later years, Martin would be overlooked as an SEC integration pioneer because he was a walk-on and Tulane left the SEC immediately after the 1966 season.

Conference winners

This is a partial list of conference champions from the 1966 season. Each of the eight geographical districts chose, by various methods, the team that would represent them in the NCAA Tournament. 11 teams earned automatic bids by winning their conference championship while 17 teams earned at-large selections.

Conference standings

The following is an incomplete list of conference standings:

College World Series

The 1966 season marked the twentieth NCAA Baseball Tournament, which culminated with the eight team

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 ...

. The College World Series was held in

. The eight teams played a double-elimination format, with Ohio State claiming their first championship with an 8–2 win over Oklahoma State in the final.

Award winners

All-America team

References

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