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Softball star Jordy Bahl to Nebraska will be a whole new ballgame for Big Ten softball

Alex Hickey

By Alex Hickey

Published:

Nebraska is poised to benefit from star pitcher Jordy Bahl making one of the unlikeliest moves in college sports history.

Imagine, say, Bill Walton walking away from John Wooden and UCLA at the height of the Bruins’ basketball glory to go home to play at San Diego State. Or Tua Tagovailoa coming back to Hawaii after winning a national championship at Alabama.

You can’t, because such a thing usually doesn’t happen. It doesn’t even cross anyone’s mind.

Perhaps the closest example is basketball player Elena Delle Donne, who left UConn’s dynasty shortly after arrival to return home to Delaware and her family. But Delle Donne is more akin to Larry Bird, who left Indiana for the comfort of Indiana State without playing a game for the Hoosiers.

Bahl’s circumstances are different. And they tell us a lot about Bahl even without seeing her throw a pitch.

Bahl is living what just about any college athlete would consider the dream — high upon the mountaintop. She’s the top pitcher for what is shaping up to be one of the greatest dynasties in college sports history.

Bahl was the Most Outstanding Player in the 2023 Women’s College World Series, becoming the first college pitcher since 1992 to pitch at least 20 innings in the WCWS without allowing a run. She went 4-0 in the WCWS, helping Oklahoma cap its NCAA record 53-game winning streak with its 3rd straight national title.

Quite obviously, that’s where Bahl could have stayed for the next 2 years of her career. With a pair of national championships already secured, National Player of the Year is perhaps the only achievement remaining for her to accomplish.

But she made it official Thursday morning: She’s coming home to continue that pursuit at Nebraska.

The native of Papillion, Neb., entered the transfer portal this week citing her desire to return closer to home. And in this case, home only meant the Cornhuskers.

In many corners, the current era of player movement in college sports is met with contempt. And there is much to dislike about the weaselly way many coaches are now recruiting players off of opposing rosters.

But this is an example of free player movement done right.

Bahl came, saw and conquered for the premier program in college softball. She’s not jumping ship to join a super team. She’s going home to help create something great.

It’s a move that could have a generational impact for Nebraska. And it will almost surely impact the entire Big Ten in a positive manner.

Take me out to the Bahl game

Bahl’s most obvious impact is likely to be at the turnstiles.

Like Iowa’s Caitlin Clark in women’s basketball, she’s the type of player every young girl playing her sport wants to see in person.

In 2022, Nebraska ranked 27th nationally in average softball attendance with 901 fans per game. A respectable number, and 2nd only to Michigan in the B1G. But with Bahl in the circle, Bowlin Stadium will likely balloon much closer to its listed capacity of 2,500 — even if early-season weather isn’t exactly conducive to fun in the sun.

As Nebraska’s volleyball attendance proves, Huskers fans will go all-out for women’s sports. It just takes the right amount of star power to turn games into an event. That’s what Nebraska would be getting in the 2021 national freshman of the year and 2022 first team all-American.

Those many fans will arrive in hopes of Bahl reviving the program’s glory. Football isn’t the only sport where Nebraska has a glorious past that has grown somewhat dusty. (Though in fairness, the softball program is at least still reaching the postseason with regularity.)

The Huskers were among the mainstays in the early days of the Women’s College World Series. Nebraska reached the WCWS in 5 of the first 7 years that the NCAA sponsored the sport. And the Huskers have made 3 more trips since then, but the most recent was in 2013.

The program is still an NCAA Tournament mainstay. However, Nebraska has won the Big Ten just once since joining the conference in 2012. The program’s lineage suggests more should be possible.

Bahl can’t single-handedly change that, but she does give an already winning program a huge building block towards getting there.

And that may not work exclusively to Nebraska’s benefit.

In the short term, opposing coaches would be able to pitch recruits on the chance to go up against one of the nation’s top arms. Only 2 Big Ten players were even named second team all-Americans this year (Indiana’s Taryn Kern and Minnesota’s Autumn Pease.)

Those ranks could begin to swell a bit in the next couple years. And when you combine it with the even larger impact of UCLA’s softball tradition entering the conference in the 2025 season, the sport’s entire trajectory may be on the verge of elevating in the B1G.

Michigan remains the lone Big Ten program to win a softball national championship, doing so in 2005. There are challenges to playing a spring sport in a region where spring is slow to spring.

But championships can be won when championship-caliber talent is willing to overlook that. It’s unfair to Bahl to make that an expectation. But with her arrival, at least it becomes a possibility.

For Nebraska fans, that’s worthy of every ounce of excitement.

Alex Hickey

Alex Hickey is an award-winning writer who has watched Big Ten sports since it was a numerically accurate description of league membership. Alex has covered college football and basketball since 2008, with stops on the McNeese State, LSU and West Virginia beats before being hired as Saturday Tradition's Big Ten columnist in 2021. He is an Illinois native and 2004 Indiana University graduate.