Quick, glance at the latest Collegiate Baseball Top 25 poll and count how many schools are located north of the Kansas-Oklahoma border.
Half? 40 percent?
Ha.
Try three of the 25 teams. And one is Stanford, a California school which enjoys a mild February climate. Another is Washington, which has to worry more about rain than snow.
One look at the poll and it’s easy to see the problem with college baseball, a sport neck-deep in a slush of climate disparity. The good news is the powers that be are aware of it. The bad news? They’re barking up the wrong tree trying to solve it.
Last month, the Division One Baseball Issues Committee suggested a uniform schedule to help balance the power, if only a little bit. The proposal would regulate the first day of practice (Feb. 1) and the first day of games (around March 1), so schools like Florida State aren’t scrimmaging in early January while Kansas University players are scraping ice off their windshields.
The proposal was a big step in the right direction. But to fit all the games in under the uniform schedule the postseason would have to be moved back a week, making the College World Series trickle into July in certain years.
That didn’t fly. Last week, the NCAA Board of Directors — led by KU chancellor Robert Hemenway — vetoed the proposal, citing an increased time commitment and increased costs of housing and feeding players as drawbacks.
To counter, Hemenway and the directors proposed shortening the season from its 56-game maximum, so both a uniform date and a June ending are feasible.
Bad idea.
Baseball is a game based on prolonged consistency. More so than any other sport, the best team won’t always win. An extended schedule — as long as possible, really — is necessary to separate the best from the worst. Shortening the season essentially would increase the luck factor.
Extra costs? There would be some if the season dipped into July. But only eight of several
hundred Division One schools still would be alive that late, and it’s safe to assume several of those eight would be revenue-producing programs.
As for the time-commitment argument, what do these players do once college season is over? They play baseball somewhere else for the rest of the summer. For the 175 players fortunate enough to make it to Omaha for the College World Series, surely another week of gunning for a national championship isn’t too big of a burden.
So for now, nothing has been solved. At KU, the Jayhawks are trying to negate the climate disadvantage just to keep pace — taking a seven-game trip to Hawaii (talk about extra costs), followed by a trip to Stanford.
KU coach Ritch Price’s mission is to make KU a consistent Top 25 program. It can be done, but looking at this week’s poll, the best bet may be to pack up Lawrence and move it to Florida.
Or else, somehow convince the NCAA Board of Directors to see that last month’s proposal actually is a really good idea.
