ESPN's Kris Budden looks back on an incredible two weeks in Omaha

Fresh off two weeks in Omaha, ESPN's Kris Budden had as good of a seat as anyone for the best Men's College World Series in history. On Friday, she joined TexAgs Radio to look back on her time in the Heartland and share some of her favorite memories as a sideline reporter.

Key notes from Kris Budden interview

• I’m recouping from 13 days in Omaha, but I’m privileged to be on!
   
• Other than the last two games that ended up being blowouts, it was the best Men’s College World Series we have ever seen. There were so many one-run games. Think about Paul Skenes vs. Rhett Lowder in the “if necessary game” on Thursday night. Every pitch felt monumental, and it felt like we had just seen the best college baseball game ever. Then you had the SEC vs. SEC matchup, and Game 1 was so close. It was very exciting.
   
• It was a perfect week and a half in Omaha. The weather was great. The ballpark played differently from the beginning of the week to the end. Great fan bases showed up. You had a representative of almost everyone from the west coast’s Stanford to an unknown No. 1 seed Wake Forest to TCU in Kirk Saarloos’ first trip to Oral Roberts’ Cinderella story. It gave everyone that was a casual baseball fan a reason to watch.
   
• The Jim Schlossnagle thing had become a bit and a funny joke throughout the year. The interviews, when you do it during the regular season and on the headset, it bleeds into the action. When I do them, I’m supposed to be done by the first pitch of the inning. There was so much bad luck for him during the headset interviews. I show up, and I thought I’d be the good luck charm. In the first interview at the SEC Tournament, the first pitch was hit for a bloop single, and he just looked at me. Still, he’s great and wants to do those interviews. Most coaches don’t. I can count maybe two or three other coaches that would be as lighthearted about it.
   
• I knew I wanted to be a reporter, and I thought I wanted to be a news reporter. I went to Mizzou to study broadcast about 20 years ago, and there weren’t many women in sports at that time. In college, I fell in love with the idea of sports storytelling. That’s when I decided to get into sports. I was in Charlottesville, Virginia, and then Knoxville, and after Knoxville was when I knew I wanted to be a sideline reporter. My first sideline job was with the Padres and covering the NFL for FOX. Then I moved to ESPN to do college football and college basketball, and I added college baseball a few years ago.
   
• Eli Drinkwitz does a good job in recruiting, but it’s about putting it all together. He just got his extension. Mizzou has had moments. They have potential, but at what point can they put it together and be a team that is consistently over .500?
   
• This is a new age for the athlete, and the student-athlete deserves to make money off their own name. The highest NIL earner is Olivia Dunne, a gymnast at LSU. Nobody actually knows what these kids are making because it’s not public. They deserve to make money. There were so many things that weren’t allowed by the old rules, like being in a band or coaching a camp. You should be able to build a brand and make money off of that. NIL has helped baseball because that sport gets 11.7 scholarships. Now some of that cost can be offset by the collectives. Football gets the attention, but NIL has helped a lot of other sports. It allows those athletes to profit off their own name, and that’s good because there is only a limited amount of time they can profit off their athletic abilities.
   
• I remember working that seven-overtime game between Texas A&M and LSU in 2018, and I remember it being exhausting. I was six months pregnant. Our production people were concerned about my safety with people rushing the field, and I remember them asking about Texas A&M fans rushing the field during the production meetings. It was only like the second field rush in Kyle Field history. That game was incredible play after incredible play. I remember Ed Orgeron getting the Gatorade bath before the game was over. There is a picture of me sitting on the grass and looking at my Apple Watch because I couldn’t stand anymore. Guys were literally exhausted and laying on the ground between plays and then getting up to do something incredible. It was amazing and the reason they changed the overtime rules.
   
• It takes a village to help me do what I do. When I was in Omaha, I was gone for 14 days. It takes help from everyone around you. It’s hard to leave when your kids are babies, and I’ve missed every swim meet my son has had this year. We live in Frisco, Texas, because my parents are there, and we knew we needed some extra hands. You sacrifice a lot, but they also get to come with me to games and experience cool things. My daughter also loves asking if Mom is going to be on TV today. Not every mommy gets to be on TV, so that’s special for me.