re: Why isn’t college baseball pushed more as a national sport?

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Because the college football and basketball are essentially the minor leagues. You watch for who will win awards because you know they will "play on Sundays".

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College football was huge before pro football even existed and the NCAA basketball tournament still pulled huge ratings during the one and done era.

I think quality of play or the players has very little to do with college baseball’s lack of popularity. People watching college sports are rarely tuning in for the players unless we’re talking about the Heisman winner or a Zion Williamson type of star.

College baseball has several fundamental problems

1) Most colleges are in small towns. That’s not much of an issue if you’re playing just 1 game on a weekend, but it simply isn’t possible for fans to travel from the big city for 4 or 5 games a week.

2) There isn’t a good seasonal time to play it. From a TV perspective, it should probably run from April into August. That doesn’t correspond with most schools calendars at all though, so for half the season, the weather is too bad to attend baseball games in a lot of the country.

3) There’s more alternatives. Because baseball plays every day regardless of level, there isn’t a day that’s just college baseball. Every time you choose to watch college baseball, you could be choosing to watch MLB or the minors instead.