Following an 18-page letter by Mississippi State head baseball coach Ron Polk, 56 college presidents have voted to override recent legislation adopted by the NCAA. The legislation, part of a four-part plan by the Baseball Academic Enhancement Group to increase baseball’s academic progress rate, required baseball’s 11.7 scholarships to be spread out among no more than 27 players with each receiving at least 25 percent financial aid.The rule would have been fully implemented at the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year and also allowed baseball programs to have no more than 35 athletes on the roster. Last year, the 11.7 scholarships were spread among 45 players with some receiving no aid or only books provided. Five players that competed for MSU in the College World Series were on no aid or books only.
Polk said if put into effect, this rule would have serious repercussions for the sport of college baseball, its players and its coaches.
“This roster cap is the killer of kids,” Polk said. “We’re a sport who gets given chump change by the NCAA, and now we’re being told how we can spend that chump change.”
The primary obstacle that will arise if the cap survives an override is the difficulty of putting together a roster while considering injuries, the talent of athletes and dealing with a 50-round professional baseball draft.
“If we don’t get this changed, then I will have to start dumping kids left and right,” Polk said. “Kids that want to be able to come here won’t be able to come here. The guys who have injuries will be told to leave because you just can’t chance it.”
Diamond Dawg senior pitcher Justin Pigott said the rule would hurt not only the players but the sport itself.
“This makes teams lose some talented athletes,” Pigott said. “With our scholarships already being so small, you’ll have some talented players choose to play other sports just because of little financial aid and the risk of being cut from their team.”
The other three parts of the Baseball Academic Enhancement Group’s plan are no longer subject to an override and will all go into effect in August 2008. Beginning in 2008, college baseball student-athletes must be eligible in the fall semester despite the fact that they are a spring semester sport.
Bracky Brett, associate athletic director for compliance, said this rule was put into effect because many baseball athletes were losing APR points because they were going into the fall semester ineligible due to not going to summer school.
“Many baseball athletes go into the fall semester ineligible because they play summer baseball instead of going to summer school,” Brett said. “They use the fall semester to get eligible but that’s already one APR point baseball has lost for the fall.”
The Baseball Academic Enhancement Group’s reasoning for the rule is that baseball student-athletes are not progressing toward a degree at the same rate as football and basketball athletes. Polk said a factor in baseball’s low APR is not enough athletic aid and athletes having to pay close to 80 percent of their summer school tuition.
“Basically the NCAA is saying if I have a baseball player who graduates in five years with a 4.0 GPA, and a football or basketball player that graduates in four years, since they go to summer school, with a 2.5 GPA, then the football or basketball player was a better student while attending college than the baseball player,” Polk said.
Pigott said the opportunities college baseball players have in participating in summer baseball leagues is a leading factor in why they choose not to attend summer school.
“We’re already at a deficit having to pay for the majority of summer school, then you throw in the fact that summer baseball is a way for us to improve our skills and be seen by the pros,” he said.
Also going into effect in August 2008, baseball student-athletes will no longer be allowed to transfer to another NCAA Division I school without facing the penalty of sitting out a year of competition.
“We’re the only partial scholarship sport that has a no-transfer rule now,” Polk said. “Before I could assist a boy with his choice to attend another school to gain more playing time, and it had worked out great for the boys. With this rule in place though, a boy is stuck unless he wishes to transfer and sit out a year.”
The final rule that will go into place for college baseball will be additional penalties, including loss of games and practice time, if a team’s APR drops below 900, the least problematic of the regulations,Polk said.
“If we could eliminate these other rules, we would welcome increased penalties on those not getting the job done with their kids’ academic progress,” Polk said. “Even with the nature of our sport and the reasons the APR is flawed statistically for baseball, we should be able to stay above the 900 mark.”
Pigott said baseball players as a whole are confused as to the reasons they are being punished for their academic progress and why their GPAs are not considered.
“I don’t see the reasoning behind any of this,” he said. “It’s based on flawed stats because we typically have high GPAs. You could probably go to most schools, and the GPAs of baseball players would be higher than football or basketball players.”
Polk said that he has received much support following his letter from fans, other coaches and players’ parents.
“There’s been a great response,” Polk said. “I’ve gotten letters from both kids and parents thanking me for doing this.”
His biggest supporters, however, continue to be his players.
“It’s incredible that he’s done all this,” Pigott said. “It shows the kind of person he is, for him at his age to be making all these phone calls in addition to coaching us. But he’s doing it all for us because we’re his boys. He may not be married, but we’re like his kids.”
Polk said due to this project, he has been forced to work much longer hours.
“These days, I’m lucky if I can get out of the office by midnight,” he said.
While Polk does not like being forced to be the defender of college baseball, he said he knows it is necessary because no one else will step up as a leader.
“I didn’t ask to be put in this position, and I didn’t want to be put in it,” Polk said. “But if I hadn’t wrote that letter, we wouldn’t have one override now.