For most teams in the Big Ten, conference season has already begun this past weekend. With Wisconsin again being anti-American and not having a baseball team, at least one team is left out playing a non-conference game each weekend. This first weekend, eight teams played in a conference game, and the rest of the teams were left to take on another no conference opponent and then play eight straight weekends against conference opponents.
This is also the final year of the 13 team format, with Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA coming in next year. While USC and UCLA aren't where they used to be as programs, and Washington is down from a year ago with their new coaching hire from LSU, that brings in 4 teams taking baseball very seriously and that will be able to improve the conference not only on the field, but throw their weight around off of it to improve how serious the conference is going to be taking the sport.