April 30, 2007

By Glenn Tanner

Special to CSTV.com

	Glenn Tanner Glenn Tanner reports from Big 12 country. E-mail here!

        ---   Column Archive   --- BASEBALL 6/7: Really Poor Indicator 6/6: College Baseball's Poster Child 5/29: Road to Omaha Traffic Report 5/14: Triplet Towers of Texas 4/30: The Revolution Begins 4/23: SEC Fans Show True Obsession 3/26: Aces In The Pen 3/12: Role of David Fits Lipscomb Just Fine 2/19: Jacks Are Wild 2/12: Miracle On The Prairie 1/27: Filling Huge Shoes 1/17: New Names on the Blackboard 1/15: Double Duty Domination FOOTBALL 8/21: Rebuilding and Reloading in Austin 8/20: Rough Road Ahead For A&M 3/31: Revelations In Austin 1/1: Auburn Awakens 12/2: Just Like Old Times 11/24: Believin' In Stephen 11/11: Another Thriller in College Station 11/4: Oklahoma Runs All Night 10/14: Good Bull For A&M 10/7: Fun Day At The Fair For Texas 9/23: Taking Care of Business, Again 9/2: Life After Vince SOFTBALL 5/20: A&M Makes The Hard Way Look Easy 5/19: Houston Stuns Texas A&M 5/18: Twin Killing For Cougars

The biggest shot in a sport's revolution was fired last week, but the mainstream media barely noticed because the topic wasn't as sexy as text messaging.

Buried at the bottom of most stories about the NCAA ban on texting recruits was a paragraph mentioning that the NCAA Board of Directors had also approved academic reforms for baseball. However, these reforms, and the late-February uniform start date that begins next season, will have a much greater on-field effect than how coaches may use their phones. 

While the uniform start date will cut the length of the season, the academic reforms came about to prevent the NCAA Board of Directors from cutting schedules. Last April, the board tabled a proposal to reduce the season to 52 games because the baseball community promised to get its academic house in order. 

Over the past year, a 25-member committee of coaches, athletic directors, conference commissioners and presidents developed a four-part academic reform plan that they sold to the board last Thursday. UNC-Greensboro's Mike Gaski was one of three coaches on that committee. 

"I think the coaches on the committee came in a little apprehensive, because we thought we were in pretty good shape," explained Gaski. "Then suddenly, we were exposed to a lot of information that said we have concerns here, and I can see why the presidents were upset."

Presidents were upset about the academic underperformance of baseball players.  While baseball players tended to enter college with higher high school GPAs and SAT scores than other student-athletes, they were earning fewer credit hours, losing eligibility and transferring at much higher rates than football and basketball players.

"After some discussion, it became apparent that an inordinate number of college baseball players were moving towards an eligibility track," Gaski said. "They weren't trying to graduate as much as they were trying to stay eligible. That caused us to settle on the notion of fall certification."

Beginning in fall 2008, baseball players can no longer use the fall semester to regain academic eligibility. All players will have to be certified as academically eligible at the start of the fall term to participate in both fall practice and the spring season. This change could have a drastic effect on summer ball - players who drop below eligibility requirements at the end of spring will now spend their summers hitting the books in the library instead of hitting fastballs in the Cape Cod League.

Next up for the committee was the transfer traffic - 27percent of baseball players transfer to other universities, more than double the rate in basketball and football.

"Our committee discussed the causes," said Gaski, "but there wasn't a single explanation for it.  Subsequently there was a message from the presidents - let's limit the transfers, because this was causing degree progress issues. Obviously, one of the issues with the transfer rule was kids were receiving very small scholarships, books or $500, so it was tough to tell a kid receiving a $500 scholarship that he couldn't transfer.  So then it came up that we needed to look at financial aid along with the transfer policy if we're going to make a change."

Immediate eligibility transfers are history, but so are $500 scholarships. Beginning in 2008, players on scholarship will be required to sit out a year after transferring, but the minimum scholarship has been raised to 33 percent of tuition, room and board. Plus, no more than 27 players in a program may be on scholarship.

Gaski admits that some of his colleagues aren't happy about being told how they can allocate their already-scarce 11.7 scholarships. 

"I think the 33 percent minimum cuts opportunities for players," Washington coach Ken Knutson said.  "We get some kids and give them a very small scholarship and tell them to come in and see how it goes, and if it works out, awesome, and if it doesn't we'll talk about it. But they get treated like a scholarship player and they can say they got an athletic scholarship, and they can feel that there's a commitment from us to them.  Those days are gone. It eliminates opportunity for kids because we can't spread the money around as much. I would say that at least a third of my team is on less than 33 percent scholarship. Our starting centerfielder has only a book scholarship, our starting third baseman is a walk-on and our starting second baseman has a 3 percent scholarship.

Knutson also believes that the situation will be worsened by next season's uniform start date - a later start to the season will mean more games each week, which will require greater pitching depth. 

"We're going to be throwing a bunch of money at pitchers because we'll be playing five or six games a week, and we'll have 10 or 15 walk-ons on the team," he said. "We might have to run a rotation, not so much based around the weekend, but when it's your turn, you pitch, kind of like the major leagues."

Some schools, though, might not have to worry about so many games. The committee's last recommendation was that programs with a four-year average Academic Progress Rate score below 900 will be required to cut 10 percent off both their game schedule and their practice calendar. With two years of data in the books, 57 Division I programs are currently below that 900 average. The NCAA's Committee on Academic Performance, however, must still approve this recommendation.

Unfortunately, the committee was unable to take action on college baseball's biggest problem - 11.7 scholarships.

"We talked about recommending 13," said Gaski. "Before this report was drafted, we sent up trial balloons to different presidents and other people asking what they thought, and the message that came back was that we were not going to get much traction asking for more scholarship money. We did get this message: `If your APR significantly improves, we could talk. Let's get your house in order, clean up these other issues, and then let's talk.'"

According to Knutson, limiting baseball scholarships so harshly creates an unfair playing field, as some schools are able to offer larger amounts of academic aid, either through private endowments or state programs. The state of Georgia's HOPE Scholarship program, for example, allows 98 percent of University of Georgia students to attend the school tuition-free.

"I know for a fact that there are schools around the country that have three or four times the scholarship money than we do," said Knutson. "There are such inequities built into the system that are never addressed." 

Gaski acknowledged that concern, but lamented that his committee was powerless on the issue.

"There's nothing we could have done about that," he said. "We looked at that and we even had a special subcommittee on financial aid questions. All of these types of state-regulated awards are outside the purview of the NCAA."

Gaski, however, does have a partial solution - replace the 11.7 full scholarships with 27 tuition and fees scholarships and let the players be responsible for their own room and board.

"We could get out of the business of being used car salesmen with kids and parents," Gaski said, "trying to designate somebody's value. `I like your son, but he's only a 30 percent guy.' That to me is belittling to the families and the kids, it's dehumanizing, and it's the one part of our sport that needs to be changed."

For many schools, the change would not raise the cost of running a baseball program.

"For a public school, 27 tuition and fees came very, very close to 11.7," explained Gaski. "For the private schools, it was a significant increase. But that being said, there were a number of private schools that loved the idea. There were a lot people who recognized the recruiting advantage of being able to say, `Our scholarship is worth $30,000 per year, and this public school's is only worth $8,000.'"

Though the idea generated significant interest on the committee, it was not included in the final report.

"It was considered seriously," Gaski explained, "but the paradigm shift was so dramatic that the committee didn't feel that, in the short window of time, we'd be able to educate all the presidents."

Maybe that idea will be part of the next revolution.