(05-21-2020 10:32 AM)masttg Wrote: (05-15-2020 04:58 PM)Jerry Weaver Wrote: (05-14-2020 11:50 AM)TheWoodenNickle Wrote: (05-13-2020 05:57 PM)Jerry Weaver Wrote: (05-13-2020 12:42 PM)emu steve Wrote: Thought we discussed baseball in this thread but I don't see the posts.
Anyway, it appears that the MAC is going to a 30 game regular season. I don't know if that means there will or will not be those February games down South or if they will be cancelled.
It seems to me, lopping off the non-conference games (most?) and start 3 or 4 weeks later with games in the border states and then conference games makes sense to me.
https://emueagles.com/news/2020/5/12/gen...anges.aspx
Steve thanks for bringing up baseball. I see two options:
1) Get rid of the sport. Owchinko and Welch are heading south these days and quite frankly the cold spring weather deters me from attending games now. I love EMU baseball, it is why I enrolled 46 years ago, but it is what is.
2) Play half the season in the fall along with MLB and the other half in the spring. Plenty of time to load up on games in nice September and October weather in the Midwest without the travel costs south in February and March.
#2 is the way to go. Do NOT cut baseball. Cutting SB was bad enough.
There are an increasing number of indoor practice facilities in MI and the talent level of HS aged players in likewise increasing. The local players to field good teams are available.
Nickle I don't disagree, baseball talent is here and always has been. Actually Oestrike developed his teams in the summer Adray Appliance League after the MAC season. Probably a NCAA violation now.
You live in the same area I do. This would have been the last weekend of the MAC regular season and we could count the good baseball weather days on one hand to this point. Last year was similar if not worse.
The NCAA clearly needs to realize that their insistence on scheduling the College World Series in early June has reduced baseball to a Southern and Western sport only. OSU was the last cold weather state university to win the National Championship, 54 FREAKING YEARS AGO!
Jerry, have you been golfing with the UM baseball staff?
https://d1baseball.com/columns/premier-p...all-model/
D1 ball may be very different next year. I like a lot of these changes.
Tom, I honestly expected this to be viewed as a "relief" program for the Northern schools, in essence an adjustment reaction to the herd of snowplow states shutting down their programs thus diminishing the national TV interest a true revenue sport needs. Frankly I was stunned to learn that Southern teams struggle with attendance as well in April and May.
Two issues I have:
June and July games are not in the normal student academic year which I find non-traditional and that makes me uneasy. Students are not on campus to attend. Then again, they certainly don't show up now in the frigid weather most home games are now, thus I suppose my discomfort might be overstated.
Our baseball roster has 34 athletes with a limit of 11.7 scholarships, which means a whole lot of players are paying tuition. The summer jobs those guys normally get could be negatively affected with this schedule change.
Now for the positives:
Northern schools provide an opportunity for local kids to enjoy four more years of organized baseball and stay close to home. These ideas provide such an opportunity.
Condensing the baseball season to just 30 games is ridiculous. The NFL plays a 16 game season while MLB plays 162, ten times the NFL. NCAA football plays 12 games, nearly the equivalent of HALF of a 30 game college baseball season. If capped at 30 games, I would indeed recommend that EMU drop baseball as well. If I were to apply that same comparative NFL to basketball, Murphy would coach less than ten contests each season. Sports have their own equilibrium with regards to a schedule, NCAA baseball should play at LEAST 50 games a year. Pushing back the season will allow them to do so.
A college pitcher throwing seven innings in a cold April game brings us two words in my mind. Tommy John. No need for a young kid to endure such a risk.
As was stated in the article, baseball participants tend to have a very high academic achievement record, I suspect an outcome produced by the tuition investment required. Nevertheless we need to provide an avenue for these guys to enroll here, these changes also welcome them.
Oestrike Stadium is truly a great venue to watch a baseball game in warm weather as the sun sets behind spectators, but horrible in the cold spring. I attend when I find the climate acceptable but that has been rare the past two seasons. June and perhaps July games have me geeked about their potential. The Lansing Lugnuts do rather well, why not EMU?
The long and short of this, the NCAA must enact these changes. If they don't the College World Series will engender the same interest in Detroit that the "Frozen Four" does in Miami.