There are several ways that the issue of baseball scholarships can be resolved...We have a radical, but sensible solution.
De-regulate the entire scholarship limits!
The NCAA for the most part is a voluntary organization and is run by its members. The actual group that made this decision to deny the baseball scholarship increase according to Boyd Nation is actually called the Presidents' Council, which is a group of university presidents wielding power on behalf of their universities and theoretically representing the best interests of all member schools.
Well, if a unilateral decision can't be made to appease everyone, then let each school determine on their own how many scholarships they want to give out. De-regulate the entire scholarship limits.
As it stands right now, many schools don't even grant 11.7 scholarships and those are the schools that are going through the motions with the sport and will never make a difference. Let the opposite happen and have the schools that want to grant more give more.
If a school wants to grant 20 scholarships...let them. If another school in the northeast cries foul..then they need to get serious and step it up and compete.
For example, MLB doesn't have a salary cap and yes, it's unfair that the Yankees top four players make more per year than 60% of MLB teams entire salaries. But when was the last time the Yankees won the World Series?
More and more teams like the Rays, and Brewers always find a way to compete. If you can't outspend them...outsmart them. That's what these smaller market teams do with great scouts and strong minor league systems.
Likewise, more scholarships for schools such as Miami, NC, UCLA or Arizona State that would be one of the many schools to take advantage of de-regulation, would not necessarily guarantee success...although it should in theory help.
But, it would weed out the teams that seemingly are just going through the motions and we at Rounding Third would like to challenge those underfunded teams to step up or step down. If mid majors or northern climate schools don't want to compete, then they must opt down to Division I-A.
I know this is a crazy idea that needs some work...it's just a point of discussion and I would like to hear others point of view. I'm sure the responses will get interesting.
3 comments:
I am not sure that de-regulation is the answer, but I would like to see all Northeast and some smaller frost belt schools opt down to Division IA. There are too many really bad baseball teams that take away a NCAA regional spot from many really good southern and western teams.
This is the same argument in every NCAA sport about automatic bids. So why have auto bids?
Bucknell beat Florida State in 2008 and you know Bucknell would have been left out of the tourney if they didn't get the auto bid.
You know the best 65 teams in the country do not make the NCAA Basketball tourney every year.
In 2008? Do we have to go back that far to find an anomolous win? I guess a blind squirrel will find an acorn eventually.
More often than not the NCAA basketball committee gets it right. As for auto bids, I say get rid of conference tourney's. They don't accomplish anything and usually mess selections up. If a small conference team wants to go, take care of business during the regular season.
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