Arizona State baseball is enjoying its first season as a member of the Big 12 Conference, and comes into the final week of the regular season ranked as the top overall team in our Big 12 Baseball Power Rankings.
They’re also enjoying a new attendance record in their first year with the league, as Phoenix Municipal Stadium set a season-attendance record with a total of 119,956 fans at home games in 2025.
It’s plenty of reason to celebrate for boosters and those who support the program, but head baseball coach Willie Bloomquist sees it differently. While he gives plenty of credit to the fans for showing up to support the Sun Devils this year, Bloomquist also says that his program is being tasked to work with “the very basement of financial support on the NIL front.”
“Getting on the topic of NIL, I don’t really like that topic, but it’s been a tough road to haul,” Bloomquist said. “I get it. People have different thoughts toward NIL, but what I’m proud of is we’ve built this team with good, old-fashioned 11.7 scholarships. We haven’t had a whole lot of NIL money to work with, and we’ve built a pretty damn good team without it. We’ve developed good players without it, so that’s a tribute to my coaching staff. That’s a tribute to these players, that they’re not out for dollar bills—they’re out for coming to a place where they’re gonna get taught to play baseball the right way and play for a program that stands for the right things.
“We don’t have deep pockets when it comes to that. Would it be nice to have it? Hell yeah, I would love it if anybody wants to help out, that’d be great. But at the end of the day, we haven’t built this program on that.”
What Bloomquist and the Sun Devils have accomplished this season is spectacular, especially considering that they’re doing it without the help of big-time NIL dollars.
They enter the final weekend of the regular season with a 35-18 record and an 18-9 mark in Big 12 play, putting them just outside of first place in the league standings.
ASU will finish out their season with a three-game series at Oklahoma State before heading to the Lone Star State for the Big 12 Tournament next week.
