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Saw this article that the SEC is considering trying to change equivalency scholarships to head count scholarships.  Thoughts?  Any chance of this happening? Seems unlikely since the 3rd paid coach vote didn't pass, but would be really nice for baseball players if it did.

https://www.al.com/sports/2019...-pac-12-schools.html

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I didn't realize softball rosters only had 20 or so players. I forgot they didn't need an entire pitching staff. It's pretty wild that softball gets 12 for 20ish spots and baseball gets 11.7 for 35. Sounds like that might need to be where some of the change lies. 

As for the headcount scholarships. 85 for football is absolutely ridiculous. There might be 40 guys who get into the game on any given Saturday. Knock it down to 65 and disperse the 20 extra scholarships among other sports. Guys go to school for 4/5 years on scholarship and barely play. It's really a waste. 

PABaseball posted:

I didn't realize softball rosters only had 20 or so players. I forgot they didn't need an entire pitching staff. It's pretty wild that softball gets 12 for 20ish spots and baseball gets 11.7 for 35. Sounds like that might need to be where some of the change lies. 

As for the headcount scholarships. 85 for football is absolutely ridiculous. There might be 40 guys who get into the game on any given Saturday. Knock it down to 65 and disperse the 20 extra scholarships among other sports. Guys go to school for 4/5 years on scholarship and barely play. It's really a waste. 

About half of D1 football is in the FCS, which is limited to 63 full scholarships, but I totally agree that those numbers are excessive. The argument is that football brings in the revenue, but most football programs are net money losers.

A few thoughts:
Would more SEC or P5 baseball scholarships impact overall competitive balance in D1? I think it would. The partial scholarship system allows lower ranked teams to attract better prospects by giving them a bigger percentage than a "better" team might. But even with more scholarships, the best teams will always lose quality players due to playing time. Scholarship or not, guys want to play.
Could you maintain the current CWS model when some conferences allow more scholarships than others? I think so. With the current system there are many schools that don't fund the maximum 11.7, so those schools are already at a disadvantage. If the change was limited to the SEC, that would definitely give those schools an advantage. If all of the P5 conferences adopted it, the Coastal Carolinas and Fresna States of the world would probably have a harder time recruiting quality players. We might see fewer/no non-P5 teams making the trip to Omaha.
More scholarships would result in more overall talent. Every year there are a few guys who choose football over baseball because of the scholarships. Some guys also sign pro deals because they can't get a baseball full scholarship. This would really open up college baseball for kids/families who have no money available for college. A 50% baseball scholarship is not feasible for many of those kids.
Would teams recruit more out-of-state kids at public schools in states like Florida and Georgia where state sponsored scholarships are available to many in-state student athletes? In some cases I think schools would. With Florida specifically, maybe not since there are so many quality in-state recruits.
One of the Oregon AD quotes annoyed me. "Who can afford to pay for all these out-of-state scholarships?" Out-of state students don't cost the school any more than in-state students.Those kids go to the same classes, sleep in the same beds, and eat the same food. If you were talking about an out-of-state student who was paying full tuition, then yes, that means less revenue to the school. But that's not the situation here.

Given Title IX (which I am not bashing--just asking), wouldn't any increase in baseball scholarships need to be offset by either reducing scholarships in some other men's sport or increasing them for women's sports?  Not necessarily one-for-one, but can you just increase the money available to players in one area?  That makes this an even more complicated situation.

Chico Escuela posted:

Given Title IX (which I am not bashing--just asking), wouldn't any increase in baseball scholarships need to be offset by either reducing scholarships in some other men's sport or increasing them for women's sports?  Not necessarily one-for-one, but can you just increase the money available to players in one area?  That makes this an even more complicated situation.

More than likely, yes. Right now, football is the only sport that has two different counts for different levels of D1 (FBS vs FCS). And of coarse, football has two separate championships. Would baseball ever do anything like that? The changes discussed in the article are pretty dramatic. I don't think anything like this has been seriously considered in years, if not decades. (Maybe it's not that serious now, either.)

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