College baseball

Yeah.

Uh, obviously it has a much higher clout than a Boston College baseball-wise.

Um, and, and you gotta look at yourself and you, you gotta say, "Hey, I think that the pitching coach here or hitting, whoever it is, whatever position you are, is really going to help me develop, and I know that this coach is going to stay here for the duration of my degree, and this guy is going to help me develop, or this team is gonna help me develop.

I have great chemistry with these guys, and the degree is also something that I, I can't pass up on." Um, I don't know how much money is actually getting thrown around.

Yeah.

So this is, as JJ said, when, when the college football, uh, kicks off, it is also kind of a kickoff for college baseball because players are back on campus.

Fall ball will begin soon.

Uh, this off season we will see more scrimmages between teams instead of intra-squads than we've seen in the past, thanks to some new NCAA legislature that came into pass, uh, four games against outside competition.

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So the other thing, the next thing I wanted to ask you about is something that there has been some news about, right? So we talked, we've talked on the podcast about ABS.

You've written about ABS coming to college baseball.

Since then, there has been kind of, not a rollback, but a little bit of a slowdown, has there not?

In 2026, ABCA Soldier Sports,

NCAA Division I Assistant Coach of the Year, Scott Jackson, is one of the most respected assistant coaches and recruiters in college baseball.

Someone who has spent more than two decades helping build winning programs and develop players at the highest level.

Jackson has been a key part of some of the most successful stretches in both North Carolina and Liberty baseball history, taking the 2026 Tar Heels team to the CWS Championship Series, During his first stint in Chapel Hill, Jackson helped the Tar Heels go 345 and 156, make three College World Series appearances, reach six straight NCAA Regionals, and win the 2013 ACC Championship.

You know, it gave, I think, all of us a chance to – I guess, you know, take that next step of being a head coach in some, you know, way, shape or form and to be able to prove to yourself that you can do it and, you know, to be able to manage a summer roster sometimes isn't easy.

It's even more difficult now than it was back then.

But I think those two leagues, along with others, have been, you know, just a great piece of college baseball from not just player development, but from coaching development as well.

Go through your different stops for people that maybe don't know this because I think good coaches can coach, and you've coached almost every position on the field.

And back in the day, they actually met at a TV station, a little small TV station in Worcester.

So that's what kind of got me like... into TV, um, the sports part of it, like not to bore you with my life story, but after college baseball and I didn't get any professional contracts, I sort of had to make a decision of what I was going to do.

And so, you know, I was thinking, well, you know, I like working behind the scenes, but let's try doing some stuff in front of the camera.

And so, um, I was able to, you know, get the internship and then I got a job, um, at the Fox station in Boston.

And my first on air job was in Portland, Maine for the CBS station up there as the weekend sports anchor.

So so that's that's sort of like it was kind of natural for me.

But to your point, Jess, yeah, like playing sports growing up and playing college baseball, you know, I felt like that.

And being honestly and being a huge sports fan growing up and growing up in Boston, that all sort of pulled me in the direction of sports.

And here we are three and a half years later with a lot of episodes being like, you know what, let's go a little bit deeper into who we are as people and what we've done.

That kind of allow us to just sit here and pontificate week after week about baseball recruiting and the college baseball landscape and college baseball games and all the like, right? So tonight we're going to interview you.

I will be the wonderful host of this podcast.

Um, so for, uh, for our start, why don't you give our listeners a quick little synopsis of where you're from, where you went to college, where you coached and how you got here.

And then we had, we had coach Healy.

Um, One of those guys, I wish I had gotten a chance to play for Coach F for obvious reasons.

That's the guy who gave me a chance to play college baseball.

Each one of those guys, I learned different things from.

Anyways, MLB, now Banana Ball is here too.

That SEC or like big college baseball is most likely more fans and intensity than minor league baseball.

How would you rank them in terms of the fan experience? Oh,

yeah, for sure.

It was just about when and how much work I put in to get there.

How did you know you wanted to play college ball? I love college baseball.

I'm a big fan of college baseball.

I know you originally were at BC, then you transferred to Arizona.

How did you know you wanted to play college ball and then obviously finish out? You had a great final year at Arizona.

You rocked that year, which was awesome to see.

Just talk about your whole experience playing college baseball.

Well, to start off, I had built a great relationship with the coach at BC at the time, Coach Gambino.

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We love college baseball and cold beer.

We like food too and throwing parlays.

We love talking ball.

Um, so obviously you won't be able to see it.

I feel like that could cause some, some discrepancies with some coaches.

Um, but what were your initial thoughts, maybe thoughts now on just this ABS system being approved across college baseball?

So, uh, my first thought was exactly what you said, it's a massive, massive benefit for those who can have it.