College baseball futility

Ok so the discussion of Nebraska having only won 4 regionals in history despite being 60 miles away from Omaha combined with Georgia Tech having blown 14 consecutive regionals including 5 as host and 3 as national seed got me wondering what are the futility categories and who fits where....

FSU Tier — All-Time "Never Won It" with Maximum Opportunity

Florida State has 61 NCAA tournament appearances (second all-time) and 24 CWS berths (third behind only Texas and Miami), including 19 Super Regional appearances (the most in NCAA history) and three finals trips (1970, 1986, 1999) — and has never won a national championship. That is the single most absurd résumé in the sport. Mike Martin spent 40 years and 2,029 wins chasing that ring. Never got it.

Honorable Mention: Arkansas, North Carolina, & Clemson all with 12 CWS berths a piece (UNC can move up this year if they beat USC)

ECU Tier — "Can't Even Get to Omaha"

This one is genuinely remarkable in the opposite direction from FSU. East Carolina holds the dubious distinction of having the most NCAA tournament appearances of any program that has never made a College World Series. They're a perennial mid-major power that wins their conference, earns bids, and then gets bounced every single time. That's a specific, recurring agony.

Honorable Mentions: Illinois & Dallas Baptist but they are so far away it's not even close

USC Tier — "Fallen Empire"

USC has 12 national championships the most in college baseball history though they haven't won one since 1998 and haven't appeared in the College World Series at all since 2001. That's the most decorated program in the sport's history essentially going dark for a quarter century. It gets worse when you dig into the full timeline:

The Trojans' tournament appearances list shows massive gaps they were in the tournament consistently through 2005, then appeared only in 2015 and 2025 over the next two decades. So it wasn't just a gradual slide there were extended stretches where they didn't even make the field of 64. USC hadn't made a super regional since 2005, and had a decade-long streak of missing the NCAA tournament entirely heading into 2025.

Honorable Mention: Arizona State & Miami

Texas A&M Tier — "Doing the least with the most"

The A&M situation is arguably the most damning given SEC resources + recruiting footprint. Texas A&M has reached the CWS eight times and has never won a national championship. Eight times getting to Omaha and zero titles in a conference that manufactures them constantly is its own special kind of painful.

Honorable Mention: Nebraska

Georgia Tech Tier - "Regional Quicksand"

Georgia Tech doesn't cleanly fit any of the existing tiers, and that's actually what makes their situation distinct enough to deserve its own category.

They're not Fallen Empire — USC, Miami, and Arizona State were genuinely dominant dynasties. Georgia Tech had a run of relevance in the late 90s/early 2000s with multiple CWS appearances and a runner-up in 1994, but they were never the sport's axis the way those programs were.

They're not FSU tier — FSU's tragedy is getting to Omaha constantly and never winning it all. Georgia Tech's tragedy happens before Omaha. They can't even get there anymore.

They're not ECU tier — ECU has never been to the CWS at all. Georgia Tech has been there, which means they know exactly what they're missing.

The defining characteristics are:

Good enough every single year to make the tournament
Good enough several times over to earn national seeds and host at home
Constitutionally incapable of converting any of that into advancement

Honorable Mention: Not sure anyone else is close