Big Ten baseball getting taste of BCS medicine
June 22, 2004
By Dennis Dodd
SportsLine.com Senior Writer
"We need some competitive equity in a sport that has none." Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, June 22, Minneapolis Star Tribune
OMAHA, Neb. -- Smelling salts are available upon request after reading that quote. Or just pull yourself up off the floor after fainting. The shock will wear off eventually.
For the past six years, that statement could have been attributed to any president or athletic director from a disenfranchised non-BCS school. The Tulanes, the Marshalls, the BYUs etc. In the summer of 2004, it is uttered by a BCS power broker -- about baseball.
Why? Because suddenly baseball is hot. Hot in terms of financials (some programs produce seven figures in annual revenue). Hot in terms of exposure (every pitch of the College World Series is televised by ESPN). Hot in terms of reputation. For 11 days each June, Omaha becomes a canvas Rockwell wishes he would have painted.
"The reason is the kids have always done a pretty fair job off the field," said LSU athletic director Skip Bertman, who won five national championships as a coach. "They do a pretty fair job in the classroom, pretty fair job as corporate citizens. There's not much cheating."
A savvy sports marketer looking to make a buy could do worse than college baseball. It has a vast demographic of all ages and races. You should see the sponsors lined up here with interactive displays aimed at young spenders -- Rawlings, CBS, Pontiac, Coca Cola.
College baseball is pure and it is growing. Look at the numbers. The bracket is up to 64, just like basketball. Last year a best-of-3 championship series was added because, well, the demand was there.
There are now two layers of playoffs before teams even get to Omaha. Those regionals and super regionals are awarded by the NCAA largely on how much revenue schools can promise.
So now the Big Ten -- and pretty much every school outside the Sun Belt -- wants to change this quaint family picnic. Those schools are proposing a common starting date (March 1) for all teams and moving the completion of the CWS into July. If not, those schools are threatening to break away and play their own national championship tournament.
The NCAA baseball committee met Monday on the issue and came out non-committal. That's a good thing. At least, they weren't cow towing to the Big Ten's might. Talk of moving the season has been around for at least 20 years. No one seemed to mind until the smell of more cha-ching began wafting around the nation.
That's the danger in turning the picnic into a strip-mall food court. College baseball in July? Never mind major-league teams that would be bent about having to wait for their draft choices, what about the sanctity of a kid's summer vacation?
Eleven days of CWS is about all anyone can stand or afford as it is. If the measure is adopted, they would be knocking baseballs around Rosenblatt Stadium 1½ months after school ended.
It has got to stop somewhere. BCS presidents just got done talking out of both sides of their mouths in allowing the BCS title game to be played into the second of week January beginning in 2006.
To rationalize the inclusion of those non-BCS teams, the presidents conveniently allowed football to go as late as Jan. 10. If something similar occurs in baseball, we might as well drop the pretense of student-athlete welfare forever.
The labor is always cheap. Even better when the money is deep.
Delany is not here. But he is the issue's point man and the irony might as well be dripping from top of both dugouts here. He has been reduced to mimicking the carping of those non-BCS schools, the same schools that he and his fellow commissioners fought so hard to keep out of the big-time football loop.
"When in your life have your heard the words 'access' and 'opportunity' used so much than in the last year or so?" said Dennis Poppe, the NCAA's senior director of football and baseball. "Now it's a baseball term."
The "disenfranchised" in this argument are the Northern baseball programs that contend they are at a competitive disadvantage to their Southern neighbors because of weather. Some in the North have to play on the road in warm climates for their first 15 or 20 games before testing the elements at home. Meanwhile, schools in Arizona, California, Texas and Florida are starting the season in January.
But whether the issue is access to the CWS or the BCS, there is a common argument. You might have even heard it from Delany and his mates when those non-BCS schools were clamoring for a spot at the table: Those who put the most money and effort into their program deserve to reap the most rewards.
There are those here who will tell you that they don't care if a Big Ten team ever gets to Omaha. The city would continue to party hearty. The baseball would be the best. The Zesto burgers would be just as juicy.
It is good that there is no Rose Bowl clout here to throw around the diamond. That's justice because the Big Ten sometimes acts like it doesn't need the rest of college sports anyway. That trip to Pasadena will pay for everything.
The conference hasn't had a national baseball champion in 40 years (Minnesota, 1964). One of Delany's teams hasn't even been here since 1984 (Michigan).
Yeah, they changed the rules years ago going from geographical regionals to national regionals. That made it less likely for Rust Belt teams to host and concentrated the sites in the South.
That still doesn't explain the likes of The Citadel, Louisiana-Lafayette, Southwest Missouri State, Creighton, Kansas, Notre Dame and Nebraska getting here in the past 17 years. All of those programs have been able to fight through bigger programs and the elements.
"Make a commitment like they made at Nebraska," Bertman said, speaking indirectly to the Big Ten. "Go out and build a stadium and get a baseball coach you want to win. Treat him like a basketball coach."
College baseball is the last, great, authentic amateur sport if done right. In Baton Rouge, LSU players are treated like rock stars. Rice made probably the biggest equity statement last year when the smallest Division I school won the national championship. It's relatively cheap when you consider baseball is an equivalency sport. Scholarships can be divided up however a coach sees fit.
Best of all, there is no Rose Bowl/Pac-10/Big Ten axis complicating the terms of a postseason. In that way, baseball is as fair as the BCS is inequitable.
"Twenty percent of the country controls the national championship," Ohio State coach Bob Todd said this week. "It's not fair. It's time we make a stand."
Tell it to Nebraska or Creighton or Notre Dame. Those schools found the time, resources and money to get to Omaha. Maybe the fairest thing is that the haughty Big Ten now knows how Marshall, Tulane and BYU have felt trying to contend for a football national championship.
Here's a trade that would solve everything: Open up the Rose Bowl, the last stumbling block toward a college football playoff, and we'll give you your July CWS.
Or maybe the world will just have to live without the awesome tradition that is Purdue baseball.
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If anyone wants another reason to despise the BCS big boys (especially Ohio State), its a must read! You Conf-USA boys handled that OSU fan real good I might add. :bluethumb: All idiot fans like him deserve as warm a welcome from every board. :D
