The Fate of College Baseball
Stuart Nachbar
May 29, 2009
Two weeks ago, the Chronicle of Higher Education had a front page story about the fiscal problems faced by major college baseball. While the NCAA's annual College World Series draws over 300,000 fans to Omaha, Nebraska every summer, baseball loses more money than any other big-time men's sport.
According to the Chronicle story, the NCAA reported that median loss for an upper-division college baseball program was approximately $700,000. And while approximately half of the major college baseball programs are based in cold weather cities, the NCAA still starts the season on February 1 with every team forced to play 56 games within three months. A team from a cold weather climate begins its season on the road, then typically returns home to play in front of less than a thousand fans. Only ten percent of college baseball programs draw more than 2,000 fans a game, and approximately half of the college baseball season overlaps with college basketball.
Worse yet, teams are allowed only 11.7 baseball scholarships to disburse across a 30 (and soon to be 27) man roster. The Chronicle story stated that some schools make do with less. And the colleges still contend with major league player drafts. The major league clubs draft students not only out of high school and community colleges; they also draft college juniors and seniors.
Men's baseball is the only major college sport where players may be drafted by professional teams before their college season has ended. While there has been no documented stories about college players "saving" themselves for the pro teams that drafted them, there is certainly the risk of having athletes with less character who are more "me" than "team."
If such character flaws are regularly found by professional football scouts who look at college talent, there is every reason to believe that there are baseball players who are equally flawed. And maybe, given major league baseball's financial woes, we should give the teams more time to separate the high-character players from the prima donnas.
One successful college coach, Gene Stephenson at Wichita State University, has suggested that college baseball pull the start of its season back from February to April. He believes that would improve the competitive balance between cold-weather and warm-weather schools as well as increase the visibility of the sport.
But Stevenson has not proposed that the number of baseball games be cut back, but maybe it should. The three major sports conferences: the ACC, the Big East and Southeastern Conference each have 12 baseball teams; the Big 10 and Big 12 have schools that have already dropped the sport. If each team plays a two-game home and two-game away series at each rival, that's forty four games for the regular season schedule. The shorter schedule, combined with roster cuts, should help make college baseball become more cost-effective. Smaller conferences could accomplish the same through interstate or regional rivalries.
These days, the distances between conference rivals make it unnecessary for many baseball schools to play out of conference games. Whoever devised baseball schedules during the 1980s did not expect the ACC to go as far northeast as Boston or as far southeast as Miami, or that the Big East would extend as far west as Louisville and as far south as Tampa.
But college baseball would also need to attract a different type of student-athlete if it adopted Stephenson's proposal. Since a college baseball schedule would mirror a major league baseball schedule, the top pro prospects would need to wait until the following February to play in a professional baseball camp.
The wait can be an advantage; the player has more time to decide his future and negotiate a major league contract. He can also use the fall semester to add credits or complete his degree. The major league clubs won't like this; the pressure to sign is to their advantage. But major league baseball needs to show the same respect for the college game that pro football shows for college football. The college game produces too much of their talent for nothing.
Stuart Nachbar blogs on thought and fiction in education and politics at www.EducatedQuest.com. His new novel, Defending College Heights, is based around the investigation into the murder of a U.S. Army recruiter in a campus community.
According to the Chronicle story, the NCAA reported that median loss for an upper-division college baseball program was approximately $700,000. And while approximately half of the major college baseball programs are based in cold weather cities, the NCAA still starts the season on February 1 with every team forced to play 56 games within three months. A team from a cold weather climate begins its season on the road, then typically returns home to play in front of less than a thousand fans. Only ten percent of college baseball programs draw more than 2,000 fans a game, and approximately half of the college baseball season overlaps with college basketball.
Worse yet, teams are allowed only 11.7 baseball scholarships to disburse across a 30 (and soon to be 27) man roster. The Chronicle story stated that some schools make do with less. And the colleges still contend with major league player drafts. The major league clubs draft students not only out of high school and community colleges; they also draft college juniors and seniors.
Men's baseball is the only major college sport where players may be drafted by professional teams before their college season has ended. While there has been no documented stories about college players "saving" themselves for the pro teams that drafted them, there is certainly the risk of having athletes with less character who are more "me" than "team."
If such character flaws are regularly found by professional football scouts who look at college talent, there is every reason to believe that there are baseball players who are equally flawed. And maybe, given major league baseball's financial woes, we should give the teams more time to separate the high-character players from the prima donnas.
One successful college coach, Gene Stephenson at Wichita State University, has suggested that college baseball pull the start of its season back from February to April. He believes that would improve the competitive balance between cold-weather and warm-weather schools as well as increase the visibility of the sport.
But Stevenson has not proposed that the number of baseball games be cut back, but maybe it should. The three major sports conferences: the ACC, the Big East and Southeastern Conference each have 12 baseball teams; the Big 10 and Big 12 have schools that have already dropped the sport. If each team plays a two-game home and two-game away series at each rival, that's forty four games for the regular season schedule. The shorter schedule, combined with roster cuts, should help make college baseball become more cost-effective. Smaller conferences could accomplish the same through interstate or regional rivalries.
These days, the distances between conference rivals make it unnecessary for many baseball schools to play out of conference games. Whoever devised baseball schedules during the 1980s did not expect the ACC to go as far northeast as Boston or as far southeast as Miami, or that the Big East would extend as far west as Louisville and as far south as Tampa.
But college baseball would also need to attract a different type of student-athlete if it adopted Stephenson's proposal. Since a college baseball schedule would mirror a major league baseball schedule, the top pro prospects would need to wait until the following February to play in a professional baseball camp.
The wait can be an advantage; the player has more time to decide his future and negotiate a major league contract. He can also use the fall semester to add credits or complete his degree. The major league clubs won't like this; the pressure to sign is to their advantage. But major league baseball needs to show the same respect for the college game that pro football shows for college football. The college game produces too much of their talent for nothing.
Stuart Nachbar blogs on thought and fiction in education and politics at www.EducatedQuest.com. His new novel, Defending College Heights, is based around the investigation into the murder of a U.S. Army recruiter in a campus community.
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