The thing that people who do surveys of this type ignore is that the standard was adopted in 1999 by the NCAA - and probably written in 1998 or earlier.
Testing done in 2002 would be probably 2nd generation bats - not really equivalent to the bats of today.
The engineers at the various bat companies have now had 9 years to figure out how to make a bat that is compliant - and that is hotter than ever.
To me there is a nice parallel to Golf. In 1995 John Daly led the pro tour with an average driving distance of 289 yards. In 2006 the average on the tour was 287 yards.
Moving away from the pros - as a teenager I was a single digit handicap golfer - and could drive it with my wooden driver and steel shaft an average of 270 yards. Today I am a high teens handicapper and routinely reach 300 yards with my turbo charged, graphite shaft, titanium head driver. My swing is far worse, nowhere near the club head speed of my youth - but I am 30 yards longer... and the holes that were once driver-7 iron are now driver wedge routine pars.
The same thing is happening with baseball bats - we just don't have a good way to measure it.
I'd love to see the BESR standards revisted once every 5 years and adjusted for technology.
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