Section 1: Introduction
NCAA baseball is the collegiate form of baseball, played by member institutions of the National Collegiate Athletic Association across Divisions I, II, and III. Competition is conducted under the NCAA Baseball Rules of the Game, published as a rules book on a two-year cycle (the current edition being the 2025-2026 NCAA Baseball Rules Book) and overseen by the NCAA Baseball Rules Committee and the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel.
The college game shares the fundamental structure of baseball with the professional game but maintains its own rules book with collegiate-specific provisions. The most distinctive of these are the requirement that non-wood bats meet the BBCOR performance standard, a pitch timer with action and between-innings clocks, mound-visit limits, the designated hitter rule (including the option for a player to serve as both pitcher and designated hitter), and the prohibition on player re-entry once a starter has been removed.
A regulation game is nine innings, the pitcher delivers from a mound 60 feet 6 inches from home plate, and the bases are 90 feet apart. The Division I season runs through the spring and culminates in the NCAA Division I Baseball Championship — a 64-team bracket of regionals and super regionals leading to the College World Series (CWS) in Omaha, Nebraska.
This document summarizes the structure of the NCAA rules: equipment standards, the field, players and officials, the rules of play, scoring, violations and penalties, and the safety provisions the committee has built into the collegiate game.
Section 6: Scoring
Scoring Runs
- A run scores each time a runner legally touches first, second, third, and home before the third out of the inning.
- A run does not count if the third out is a force out, is made on the batter-runner before reaching first base, or results from a preceding runner being put out on appeal for missing a base.
Determining the Winner
- The team with more runs at the end of a regulation (or extra-innings) game wins.
- A game ended by the run-ahead rule is complete, and the score stands.
- Called and suspended games: When a game is stopped for weather or darkness, the rules define when it is a complete game, when it is suspended for later completion, and when it must be replayed.
The Box Score
The official scorer records each at-bat, run, hit, and error, and the line score by inning, applying the rules book's scoring rules to credit hits, errors, earned runs, and pitching decisions.
Championship Format
- The NCAA Division I Baseball Championship is a bracketed postseason: 16 four-team double-elimination regionals (a 64-team field), then best-of-three super regionals, leading to the eight-team College World Series in Omaha — itself a double-elimination tournament followed by a best-of-three championship series.
- Divisions II and III conduct their own NCAA championships under the same rules book.