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Part of the issue is revenue the sports generate. Both sports get sponsors (Nike, Power Aid, TPX, etc...) but the real difference is in what the teams make at the gate. Basketball across the board makes more money at the box office than baseball. Add to this television rights. The networks are all trying to grab rights to broadcast certain basketball. Any day of the week during the season you can probably find a college basketball game being broadcast. It is more difficult to find college baseball games on TV unless you have a regional sports network like Fox Sports South until post season. But even the regional sports channels won't have a college game every night. 1-2 a week if your lucky.
Also, get a group of a hundred boys under 18 and odds are some of them will be wearing college licensed clothes, but it will probably be basketball or football rather than baseball. And if it is a baseball cap it's probably to support the basketball or football rather than baseball.
I just looked at my favorite school's website (UNC) and made some notes. I feel they would be a great example as they dominate in baseball and basketball. In non-conference baseball games their avg attendance is just over 600. In conference games their attendance is just over 1800. If you add in the CWS round in Cary for their games they averaged a bit over 3200. The grand total of attendance for all of their games was just under 50,000.
Lets compare that to their basketball. Conference or non-conference the Dean Smith Center is at about 20,000 per game. Times 16 home games = 320,000 fans. This isn't including the 3 exposition games which the stands were virtually full as well.
This is what the Athletic Dir's are looking at when negotiating contracts for their officials.
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