By Willie Nicklaus and Brian Foley

With the Academic Progress Rate as the basis for sweeping changes recently enacted by the NCAA under the guidance of a committee called the Academic Enhancement Group, that included coaches and administrators, college baseball at the Division 1 level may see the advantages southern schools have enjoyed in the past slowly diminish. Let me qualify the term “slowly” meaning a snails pace.

Four major ingredients come into play and serve several purposes above and beyond the APR. The first one is the Uniform Start Date, which in 2008 is February 22. Up to this season, many southern and west coast programs typically started their season in early February. This head start allowed them to schedule the majority of their games on weekends utilizing their best three pitchers.

In contrast, northern programs started much later and, in an effort to increase their RPI and increase their chances at an at-large bid, started to travel to warmer climates in mid to late February to compete right from the indoor field house to the great outdoors. Already 3-4 weeks behind, they came up short almost 2/3 of the time. When the northern teams came back home, the weather was still a factor, they started competition with teams in the same RPI situation while the southern programs continued to feed off each other’s RPI.

The cold weather programs, under a compressed schedule that forced more weekday games, typically spend the majority of their scholarship funds to attract pitching in favor of hitting. A four to five man rotation is the standard up north. The facts below illustrate the percentage of games started by a programs top 3 pitchers in 2007 using the ACC, SEC, Pac 10, and Big East as an example:

Arizona State		55	64	85.94%
Florida State		50	62	80.65%
Oregon State		54	67	80.60%
Tennessee		47	59	79.66%
Kentucky		43	54	79.63%
UCLA		48	61	78.69%
Southern California		44	56	78.57%
Georgia Tech		44	57	77.19%
Rutgers		48	63	76.19%
Pittsburgh		41	54	75.93%
California		41	55	74.55%
Mississippi		48	65	73.85%

The study done on 2007 D1 teams showed that cold weather programs used the same three starters about 62% of the time. To further accentuate this, ASU, who rode their 3 horses as much as anyone could at near 86%, had their 3 top pitchers on the mound for 385 innings out of a total 569, or 68%. Michigan, who had a great season, threw their top 3 pitchers for 237 innings, or just over one half. As most northern programs do, they spread the load to accommodate the schedule. The ones who are successful can claim depth, talent, and great recruiting. With the compressed schedule, it becomes obvious that warm weather programs will rely more on pitching depth than ever before. This reliance will also show the college baseball world how deep they really are. This newfound reliance will also affect who and how many get recruited, which leads to the next component, the 25% minimum to 27 maximum counters.They called it “stockpiling”, or fall tryouts, whereas young student-athletes, lured to the potential limelight of the huge southern programs for a mere bag of books($400), arrived on campus along with sometimes 50-60 other players to take their shot at college baseball glory, many casually being dismissed after the Fall.The NCAA Bylaws state that any baseball player that signs an award letter after the NLI is signed is guaranteed a minimum 25% of one equivalency with the maximum recipients capped at 27 counters(30 in 2008-09). Unless certain exceptions are met, all 25% will be baseball monies. What does that mean, and how does this level the playing field even more?The answer is simple mathematics. A coach, who may have had several rostered players on a 3% grant, or books, has to fork over another 22%. That takes money away from recruiting more blue-chippers, and the result may be a wider distribution of talent. By now you may be seeing the picture more clearly. Fully funded Division 1 institutions with 11.7 equivalences who opt to award the maximum 27 players the minimum 25% will have just under 5 full grants to sweeten the deals of some of their counters.The next component is the 35 man roster cap. Who will these players be? With the underlying basis the APR and their concern for the student-athlete’s welfare, the NCAA stated that eliminating stockpiling will reduce transfers, a huge factor in computing the APR. What the roster limit may also accomplish is a little more parity. Any kid with tremendous D1 baseball ability will expect a baseball grant. He will expect to be at least one of the 27 allowable counters. That “book” player in the past that opted for the great sunny south and got locked up to wait his turn on the bench and develop may find more security at a different program, say a so-called Mid major who is offering a little more investment, that being 25% versus nothing baseball-wise as a non-counter.

The players who become the non-counters at the back end of the roster generally will be paying customers or those who receive qualified academic grants. Funny thing, these kids are tremendous talents also. Kids weighing where they choose to attend college and play baseball that are reasonably recruited by more than one program will examine their options more diligently. The talent distribution just may have broadened even more.

This leads into the elimination of the one-time transfer rule. From the player’s standpoint, he usually left due to the lack of playing time, or no future playing time was conveyed to them by the coach. The kid they recruited, usually for no investment, or way too much in some cases, was deemed as a baseball no-fit in their program. Under the new rules, that player would have to sit a year in residence if a counter and transfers, and the coach spent 25% on his misjudgment of the abilities of the player for that season. NCAA Division1 coaches now, more than ever have to be very diligent in whom they recruit, and then try to develop them instead of turning their rosters over faster than a car dealership does.

When you combine the controlled spending, the roster caps, the transfer and APR factors, and mostly the uniform start date, the competitive gap between warm and cold weather college baseball programs may narrow to some small degree. How small depends which coaches you ask. Since the changes and the effect they make are yet to be seen, from a scheduling aspect, just maybe a few wins or losses either way in the weekday OOC games early on. You can bet each teams Big 3 will still be ready to go for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in conference competition.

There still is one aspect the NCAA can’t change…………..the weather.

The NCAA has been approached with several ideas from northern representatives in recent past, ranging from regional RPI’s, extending the season even further into summer, or having separate regional tournaments by location where players from 8 sections of the country have a shot at experiencing the Tournament. Research indicates that many of the northern college coaches feel they can compete with anyone in the country late in the season after their respective teams have played enough games and gelled somewhat. The NCAA regional and super-regional’s lately having proven that, but the problem is getting there in the first place for the cold-weathered baseball players. The current setup makes that extremely difficult, even for the most talented of cold weather programs.

The northern half of the United States boasts some of the greatest weather starting in late summer and into early November. Could a split season be a solution? Imagine a Florida vs. Michigan series in September at the newly renovated UM Stadium in Ann Arbor, or a 4 way in Columbus, Ohio with host Ohio State and Kent State (usually the top Ohio program) against LSU and Clemson? The students are on campus, the weather is great, and the draw of big southern programs could lead to better attendance and an overall increase in interest for all of college baseball. Won’t happen.

The players, many concluding the summer collegiate wood bat leagues, would be baseball sharp as they arrive on campus in mid-August and practice with their team outdoors for a Uniform Fall OOC start date of September 15. Most conference games consist of a little less than one half of the 56 game schedule. The proposed Fall season could run 8 consecutive weekends for 24 of the 56 games, leaving the Spring session with 32 games, allowing all the programs the ability to utilize their pitching as desired, while keeping the kids in class on more weekdays. Won’t happen.

Spring practice can begin on February 1, and the Conference season March 15. That leaves approximately 9-10 weeks before the regionals to play the 32 remaining games, which would include a few OOC tune-ups, the conference schedule, and any conference tournaments. Won’t happen either.

The northern programs would get their wish to play the southern programs “game ready”, which is all they want, and the southern programs can still enjoy tremendous revenues, slightly reduced by about 10-12 home games net of guarantees granted. Really won’t happen. Why help the northern teams, who typically play two-thirds of their season on the road.

What you can count on though, NCAA changes or not, is continued warm weather program dominance at the CWS each season under the current RPI, with the occasional cold weather program that gets hot at the right time, RPI aside.

I recall reading an article from 2004 in USA Today. Bob Todd, head coach at Ohio State was quoted saying “Abner Doubleday, when he invented baseball didn’t expect them to be playing it in February and March in New York,”.

Since 1983, around 90% of the teams in Omaha have been from less than 20 southern or sun belt states. Maybe the “snails pace” changes will reduce that number to 87%.

Tags: CBB Column, College Baseball, New Draft Rules

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 11:52 pm and is filed under CBB Column. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.