Quote Originally Posted by HSVDawg View Post
We do not have everything we need. Facilities and fan support are our strengths, but are very very small parts of a very big equation. Glossing over the scholarship issue like its a small hurdle is whistling past the graveyard. Its about the biggest hurdle there is and there is no immediate solution to solve it. And that's not a "poor old MSU statement", it's a "poor old college baseball" statement because it is a drastically unlevel playing field.

And saying we still bring in top ranked classes is not accurate either. Baseball classes are ranked at signing day then never really assessed again. You lose guys to the draft, you lose guys to injury, you lose guys to the draft again after they are Jr's when they have just recently started contributing (think Zac Houston) and then you have guys that don't pan out. Way more variation and overall inaccuracy with college baseball recruiting rankings than with football and basketball. They aren't worth the paper they are printed on, and even if they were, our 2015 class was the only one we have signed recently that was even Top 10.



I don't think anyone is saying we can't expect to be very good and occasionally elite in baseball. The problem is people think we should be good exclusively because of big crowds and a nice stadium atmosphere. There's way more to it than that, namely getting and retaining talented players. A kid from Georgia isn't gonna pay $50k in tuition instead of getting $500k in signing bonus money because he can smell ribs smoking when he's standing in LF. And the other problem is that college baseball as a whole isn't structured well enough for any team to become perrenielly dominant like Alabama football. There is way too much variation and roster turnover with the draft (and now, with an increasing number of pitching injuries due to travel ball, etc.) for teams to just stay at the top forever. It just isn't feasible.

But again, none of that means we can't strive to be better and identify improvement areas. And I think we are doing that.
You set up a mother f'ing scholarship fund to cover the differences in the lottery scholarships. It's not f'ing hard.