From Eric's blog, February 25th

Quote:Coach Graham:
Well it’s hard to judge a team this early in the season with these bats. We’ve got a good left-right ability to our order. But I think what they’ve done with the bats is counter-productive to the game of college baseball. And all you’d have to do to get some of that offense back is to change the baseball.
.
Eric:
Are you talking about the minor league ball or the major league ball?
.
Coach Graham:
A lowered seam with a higher co-efficient of restitution like the major league ball. With the big league ball, these kids could use wood and they’d still be able to hit home runs with a livelier ball. Well think about this, Eric, in 1920 the big leagues put in a livelier ball and there were two reasons for that. 1- people like the home run. And 2- people like the home run and bought more tickets. And think about this too, why did the higher-ups in pro baseball look the other way during the steroid era? Because it was still pulling in fans. So we don’t have to do anything but use a low-seam ball. They say that the high-seam ball helps the pitcher, that the college pitcher could spin it better, but that’s really not true. The low seam ball can actually be thrown a little bit harder because there’s not as much drag on the ball. And the ball will go further, especially with the wind against it. Because when you have the high-seem ball hit into the wind, all it does is climb. The bad thing is that they’re hurting the game.

.
The last "Baldcast" with Eric and Mike Rooney, Rooney says that ESPN is going to do one of their "sport's science" pieces on this. Rawlings makes both balls, the one used in the NCAA tournament and the ML ball. Rooney talked with a Rawlings rep.

The Rawlings guy said the exit speed (off the bat) will be exactly the same. That the difference will be that there will be less movement with the flat seam ball, meaning more hard hit balls, less swings and misses in the college game. The Rawlings guy said to Rooney, "if you guys do this in college baseball, you're throwing your pitchers to the wolves. They are going to get their ears turned inside out."

Interesting