NCAA Baseball News Today and what I'd Like to see
The news today takes some of the sting away from watching our shortstop pitch, the umpire decide to make himself part of the show because he can't tell if a foot is on second base or not and us hit about 3-4 home runs on a normal day to lose the Governor's Cup. Still can't believe that move with Forsythe. Really felt like I was in the Twilight Zone last night all around. One of the weirdest losses for us I've ever seen.
Anyway- better days ahead for us. Looks like they are going to actually common sense for baseball scholarships. As I said really glad Ron Polk is alive to see this and our National Championship. I'll never forget Gene Swindoll putting up his like 65 page manifesto on the subject. And y'all know I can make some long posts but I'm not topping that anytime soon.
From what I understand there will still be a 35 man roster but the conferences will decided how many scholarships. I have no idea what the SEC is going to decide to do. To me, they might as well go ahead and give out 35 because the ones that wouldn't be on athletic aid anyway are going to get NIL, endowment, etc money. This is the way it should be whatever they decide. It's not fair to MSU, Arkansas, LSU, Tennessee, Ole Miss, USM, Louisiana Lafayette, and anyone else that wants to invest in baseball to not be able to at the fullest because St. Peter's Holy Cross Catholic University in Connecticut can't afford to support baseball or chooses not to support it. That would be like Alabama being limited to 40 football scholarships a year because Mississippi Valley State can't afford 85. Never has made any sense to me and never will. But one thing is clear- at the very least more college baseball players will be getting scholarship money than ever before.
That is HUGE for MSU. We were going to have to use our NIL to basically fund our players tuition and the other things people have to pay for in college. Now with presumably most if not all players able to receive athletic aid we can now use NIL to help recruit against MLB and the draft more effectively. As well as other schools of course. Back in the 1990's LSU used TOPS and steroids to their benefit to win five National Championships. Vanderbilt has used their endowment to win two the past ten years. Now we will be able to use our resources- our large and loyal fan base, an athletic administration that gets baseball, our facilities, and our history and tradition to our full advantage. Which we have never been able to do before at full power. And that makes our success the past 50 years even more impressive especially when you think about it.
What we have to do now to recruit against MLB baseball is basically offer a partial scholarship, maybe some academic aid and some NIL money so let's estimate roughly 15K. MLB for a player that is drafted in the third round can offer more than a million depending on how they spend with their highest picks. For example Maddux Bruns got a 2.2 million dollar bonus for I believe the first round. Now I'm not saying we are going to start getting first round picks. But those player that are in that third to fifth round- if we can improve and develop our NIL some we can maybe keep a Jordan McCants. I think he got a 500K bonus or something like that. If we can offer him 100K in NIL money then that would be 300K for three years. If he kind of flames out and gets the draft minimum he would get 125K for that. Which would be a total of 425K so there is some small risk but it isn't the risk it is now. I say small because now if he does reasonably well and gets offered another 300-500K to sign with MLB after three years of college he would have made more money for himself in the long run while getting money in the short term. And it's key to remember that MLB usually only pays out the bonus as either a one time thing and then that's it until a player makes it to MLB. So, we should be able to recruit bigger fish and keep them more often than we are now. Jett Williams? No. We're probably looking at 300K or more a year for a player like that to make him consider coming to school. A guy like Jordan McCants? Probably. I'm not saying offering 300K a year is likely just throwing some numbers around to provide some context.
NIL will also help us keep players like Houston Harding. If you are drafted after round 10 you're going to get the minimum whether you use your leverage or not. So if we can offer a player like him between 50K-100K they're probably going to take that deal because they're going to end up making money if they get drafted after their senior year.
What I would like to see the SEC do is increase the rosters to 40 players fully funded. That's what MLB has. And I'd like to see the SEC allow a five man "Club roster" designated for injuries. So you know a team doesn't have to pitch their shortstop. Basically these player would be guys that go out for the 40 man roster but don't make it. They can't practice during the regular season with the team unless activated and are not on athletic aid but they can play on a school's club baseball team to stay in shape. For example, MSU may have four pitchers designated for the Club team and another catcher for the five.
The other thing that was huge news is they are now allowing the volunteer assistant AKA Kyle Cheesebrough to be paid assistants. That was another dumb NCAA rule. What I would like to see is the SEC allow teams to have five full paid assistants. Cohen when he first got here essentially had five- two full paid in Butch Thompson and Lane Burroughs. Then Nick Mingione was the official unpaid volunteer assistant. But then we had Tyler Bratton who helped with outfielders and Greg Drye who was the bullpen coach on staff as well. So there is some precedent to my idea. Of the five of course two would be the pitching and hitting coach. From there we've had guys that specialize in catching like Cheesebrough, guys that were experts in base running and bunting like Mingione, and etc. And then we could have a bullpen coach. The other three coaches could also have other specialties as well. For example the bullpen coach could maybe be someone with ties to Tom House or Brent Strom. One of the other assistants coaches could be a former MLB scout with extensive scouting ties to aid in recruiting and player identification. We could have someone who specializes in technology like Driveline. There are a lot of different things and ways we could go with it.
I conclude by saying "That's Baseball" my friend. Ron Polk wins again.
