Baseball Coaches Convention - proposed changes
In case anyone wants to know what was discussed at the baseball coaches convention regarding changes to college baseball, D1Baseball posted this article.
In addition to proposing the elimination of the 25% minimum scholarship rule, they discussed:
- Increasing the 27-man counter rule (but not the 35-man roster rule)
- Preliminary talks about adding 4 fall exhibition games
- Preliminary talks about allowing a 4th full-time coach
- A new pace of play committee, that discussed options for speeding up the games, including possibly allowing catchers to have a headset to get the plays, limiting defensive timeouts, keeping hitters in the batter's box and more
Per Aaron Fitt, "The 35-man cap is probably the single biggest reason for the increased parity in college baseball over the last decade; big schools can?t carry 25 walk-ons anymore. They are limited to 35-man rosters, and so the 20 or 25 players who might have been content to walk on at LSU or Mississippi State or Arizona State are now going to smaller schools instead. That won?t change if the 27-man counter rule is repealed." I would've thought the scholarship limit played an equal part in the parity - what do y'all think?
Personally, I doubt the 4th coach or any changes to the scholarship limits happen anytime soon because there are only a handful of schools that actually make money on baseball. Even a P5 school like Cal-Berkeley has threatened to cut their program. Seems to me that until changes are made on the revenue side, those will be longshots, especially if the ESPN golden goose stops laying.
