College Baseball In Jeopardy - an interesting letter by MSU's Ron Polk

[tmh8286]

I came across this on the Wichita State board, and thought it had direct application to ORU.  It is a letter written by Ron Polk, head coach at Mississippi State, that is addressed to just about everyone that is an administrator at a college or in the NCAA.  It discusses a new set of rules pertaining to college baseball that will go into effect August 1, 2008.  They primarily deal with academics, transfers, and the Academic Progress Rate (APR):

College Basebal In Jeopardy

Read the whole letter to get the entire effect of what he's trying to say - if you've got a couple hours.  Otherwise, copy and paste this phrase - Allow me to finish this way-too-long of a letter - into Google Toolbar, then use your highlighting tool to find it easily, about 2/3 to 3/4 the way through the letter, and read from there.  He pretty much covers all the bases ( no pun intended ) in that final section. 

He makes some very good points on how harmful, actually punitive, these rules are to college baseball.  ORU has already felt the sting of APR, for some of the very reasons cited in the letter:

ORU Baseball Punished

[Bogus Smith]

Nice find, TMH.  Sounds like the quality of college baseball is really going to take a hit for marginal players.  Coaches will not have the luxury of taking a chance on players that are "projects" unless those kids are willing to pay their own way to play.  Only the quality programs will have players that have the possibility of being any good willing to walk-on to earn a scholarship.

Quality players that need a few years to hone their skills and work towards an education by looking to college baseball to be their path to the pro ranks will be hard pressed to take a chance on good baseball programs.  They may opt for the taking their chances as a high round draft pick out of high school or go the Juco / NAIA (small college) route where the rules aren't as stringent.

Ron Polk seems to be a very knowledgeable spokesman for this subject.  He has run a quality program with great baseball players coming out of his program for years.  I only hope that the length of his letter doesn't force his reasoning to find its way to the trash can before the end of the first page.

[tmh8286]

Seems like this could be very deleterious to college baseball.  As Polk said, there will probably be such an outcry when these rules go into effect that eventually the NCAA will have to back off on them a bit, but that may not happen while Polk is still coaching.  I'd sure be interested in hearing what Rob Walton thinks about it.  The discussion on the WSU board was pointing out that some of these rules actually promote parity, because they make sure that everyone is forced into having the same number of players and all.  But I really I don't know how schools are able to field teams with 11.7 scholarships between 30, or even 27, players.

[Bogus Smith]

I agree that there will probably be more parity among the college baseball teams because the better schools will not be able to attract a lot of walk-ons that can get their school paid for through academic and other types of scholarships or grants.  Limiting the number of players to 35 is probably realistic.  In comparison, a major league baseball squad is 25 players; however, they also have another 125+ full-time, paid players playing in their farm clubs ready for "the call". 

Regardless, the one thing that the NCAA can't regulate is the weather.  Southern tier schools will continue to have a competitive advantage over northern tier schools because those teams can work out year-round (on their own, of course!!).  As we get closer to these rules being imposed, it would be interesting to hear Rob's views on these changes.

I think the real killer will be the requirement to sit out a year when transferring.  I think this rule alone will require a player that wants more playing time to consider a lower division school (D-II or NAIA) to finish their collegiate career, which will elevate the level of play in those divisions, but could keep them from "being seen" by MLB scouts, which will require them to go the free agent route through tryout camps and other workouts.

It's also possible that Ron Polk is more concerned about making hard decisions and looking bad with his players than he is about the overall state of the sport of college baseball.  If everyone is playing by the same rules, and the NCAA enforces those rules, everything should work out for all concerned.