Something just dawned on me

Excellent point TPM. This is a thin silver lining for some, and it could ease some pressure to make it past fall roster cuts for first timers.

I think the new rules can be viewed from differing perspectives and no matter what the arguments about benefitting the student, entities other than the student may be benefitting more. Some thoughts:

35 man roster limit. May help the student from getting in an over-recruiting situation. This rule seems designed imho to help cold-weather schools by preventing roster stock-piling in the warmer-weather climates.

The one-time no-sit, transfer rule has been eliminated. Benefits all NCAA D1 member institutions. Again, probably helps cold-weather schools maintain their players i.e., prevents a kid from getting recruited off of a summer roster at the Cape. Obviously this helps all schools maintain their players. This rule clearly goes against the student although the argument is that this is designed to increase graduation in baseball which I think is dubious at best.

Scholarship players must be given at least 25% - probably benefits non-pitchers to an extent and may hurt some pitchers with respect to the amounts they may have received in the past. Again, this probably benefits cold-weather schools by inducing kids to accept dollars at one school in lieu of walking on somewhere else where they may have been willing to accept a lower amount (less than 25%) in the past i.e., Khalil Greene scenario.

The start date this year for all colleges is Feb 22nd. I believe it moves to March 1st the following year. Again, this rule is designed to increase the competitiveness between cold and warm weather schools. It can be argued with schedule compression that more kids will now suffer academically. Granted, the cold-weather schools can argue "join the club" but it seems policies ought to consider doing the most good (utilitarian principles) for the most people.

These rules can be argued from numerous perspectives and mine may be all wrong. I do believe the student was the last consideration in the priority list however.

Spoke with a Divsiion I coach yesterday---not all of the new regs are set in stone !!!!

CD,
One of the potential benefits of the 25% rule is that it includes academic money and encourages coaches to give some of their roster spots to players who are also strong academically in order to have more athletic dollars available to give to blue chippers without the strong academic background resulting in a win for those two groups but perhaps taking away from the good ballplayer who is not quite a blue chipper and who is good academically but not quite qualified to get big academic money. There are always tradeoffs. I doubt there will be an impact on pitchers as the dollars will still go to where the value is.

quote:

Originally posted by CADad:
CD,
One of the potential benefits of the 25% rule is that it includes academic money and encourages coaches to give some of their roster spots to players who are also strong academically in order to have more athletic dollars available to give to blue chippers without the strong academic background resulting in a win for those two groups but perhaps taking away from the good ballplayer who is not quite a blue chipper and who is good academically but not quite qualified to get big academic money. There are always tradeoffs. I doubt there will be an impact on pitchers as the dollars will still go to where the value is.

CADad - good points. The academic allowance to satisfy the 25% rule does seem like a nice incentive to find scholar athletes. That part of the rule does seem like a win/win for the students who qualify and the programs who find them.

quote:

Originally posted by TRhit:
Spoke with a Divsiion I coach yesterday---not all of the new regs are set in stone !!!!

For the past couple months you have hinted this stuff. In todays media, its very hard to hide anything, so I ask what basis is there that a force is yet to be reckoned with regarding the rules?

On to the rules.................

The attractive ******-weather schools are the ones that function with 30-35 players. As careful and selective as they have been, they will now have to be extra careful.

In all the threads we have had about the rule changes, I hold my conclusion to this:

Players are recruited in 3 levels.......

1. Impact incoming players
2. Backup incoming players
3. Substitutes for busts

OLD SLUGGER


The final meeting has not yet been held

quote:

Originally posted by CADad:
CD,
One of the potential benefits of the 25% rule is that it includes academic money and encourages coaches to give some of their roster spots to players who are also strong academically in order to have more athletic dollars available to give to blue chippers without the strong academic background resulting in a win for those two groups but perhaps taking away from the good ballplayer who is not quite a blue chipper and who is good academically but not quite qualified to get big academic money. There are always tradeoffs. I doubt there will be an impact on pitchers as the dollars will still go to where the value is.

I don't understand how this benefits academic players. If a coach has a choice between a player getting no money and an "academic player" getting some money (that doesn't count) it seems like it wouldn't matter which player the coach chooses to keep on the team because no additional athletic money is "freed up" by choosing either player.

.

TR...Gotta love this!

quote:

Spoke with a Divsiion I coach yesterday---not all of the new regs are set in stone !!!!

We have heard this so many times that I had to check the date...figuring that I had accidently gotten into an old thread!

Just like the NCAA to set the regs in stone...make everyone scramble and adjust for a year...and then say..."Oh, nevermind"

Couldn't make it more confusing if they tried to do so...and maybe they are.

44
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College Parent:

Maybe I can help here. Hopefully, at least, I can provoke a reaction. Let us assume for a moment that I am a D-I coach of a moderately succesful program in a Mid-level Conference somewhere in this great country of ours. Let's further assume that I don't care about the kids and all I want to do is put together the best and winningst team I can year after year. And then lets consider family income in the equation.

OK You have a ballplayer whose family needs some finiancial aid or he can't afford to go to my school. If in my mind the young man is in line for a starting pitcher role in the future, he will get money either way. How many of those type of players do I need? Obviously more than 5. Do I need as many as 10? Let's say 10. So I have to pay money to all of them to get them and if they don't qualify for any academic aid, there goes at least half my scholarship budget maybe more. *assuming I've got to pay an average of at least 50% of their finiancial needs to get them to come. Listen, I am talking REALLY GOOD PITCHERS here). But I need more pitchers on my roster than 10 (backups in case of arm trouble, grades, homesick, etc). So I look for let's say 6 additional pitchers that can give me innings and that I might be able to mold into something decent. But I am out of money that I budgeted for pitching. So, if one or more of these back up pitchers who can give me innings are in a family that needs finiancial aid or they won't come to my program, then I get the school to give him an academic scholarship if he qualifies. If he doesn't qualify, I have no further options. So the not so wealthy academic student baseball pitcher comes to my school to fill this role and the other academic non-qualified pitchers who still need money or they won't come to my school have to find somewhere else to go to school or they can't play baseball in college.

What about position players? I think it would work the same way. I recruit certain position players hard. In an ideal world I want power hitting corner infielders and corner outfielders that I can teach to play the positions. These are the guys that are being recruited by my competition and they won't come to my school unless they have some sort of finiancial aid. How many of these guys do I need? With the DH rule, I need a minimum of 5. But I will probably try to have at least 8 0r 9 on my team at any given time *backups in case of injury, young players growing into the position, etc.) So when we add the 10 pitchers to the 9 stud position players, I have 19 players on scholarship and only 11+ scholarships max. I've probably spent most if not all of my total sport's scholly budget at this point. And I only have half my position players at my school. So what do I do now?

Although I would love to find catchers, centerfielders and middle infielders that could hit as good or better than the group refered to in the previous paragraph and still play stellar defense, they are being recruited by everybody including the elite D-1 college baseball programs. So, for me, I have to try to find some defensivily talented players to play these middle positions who hopefully can hit for average, get on base, etc. There are a lot of them out there many of whom aren't getting heavily recruited so what do I do? In the old days, I might be able to offer them book money or a couple thousand dollars and get them to come to my school. But under the new rules [see Cleveland Dad's post above], every baseball scholarship receipient has to receive at least 25% of their finiancial needs. So here I am with 19 players on scholarship each receiving somewhere between 25% and 100 % of their finaincial needs. Maybe if I am lucky I can find one more scholarship for a real stud shortstop but that is probably it.

The new 25% rule forces me to look at how I put together my team in a different way. For me, just me and not all coaches, at these middle positions I mainly want to find players that can play good solid defense AT EVERY POSITION at the D-1 level. But I don't know whether any of them can become even a marginal hitter at the next level. So I try to recruit two per position. Hopefully one older and one younger. And I will need at least 3 catchers that can play defense and call a good ball game whether they can hit or not.

So lets do the math. I have 16 pitchers [10 on sport scholarship and 6 not] and 9 position players [all on sport scholarship]. Now I've got to recruit a minimum of 10 more players to fill my 35 man roster and I have no money left. Knowing this in advance, I search for players that can qualify for academic aid at my school to fill these middle roles or players that don't need or want any finiancial aid at all (quite rare birds; often known as recruited walk-ons).

So to sum up, a student athlete from a family of limited means who is eligible for academic aid can come to the school where I hypothetically coach and play baseball and an academic non-qualifier of equal baseball talent and ability at one of these middle positions is left out in the cold. And that is the way I think. What about a coach who does not even consider defense in this equation?

So again, under the new rules and with my coaching priorities, several true student athletes will be able to come to play baseball at my school that under the old rules I might not have had to recruit so heavily. And I think every college coach will have to go through some version of this analysis.

TW344

I spoke with the NCAA, the rules ARE the rules. Changes may occur, but for now, these are the rules and that is what coaches must go by.

In most programs, only a few of the incoming classes are impact players and have been awarded for that purpose. That was one of the reasons the coaches did not like the new scholarship rules. They didn't feel a 10% or 15% players should get 25%(in any combination). I think that particular rule fell in favor of the player.

TW344,

If I understand your scenerio correctly you are essentially saying there will be less competition for the academic player due to some players being priced out of college. I am not sure that's a substantial problem, morelikey a lot of non-academic players will just have to pay/borrow more to go to school. I guess only time will tell.

Ironically, a player that is getting academic or need based aid not meeting NCAA requirements will actually count againt the coaches athletic money!! ouch!

College parent,
Here was my concept. Let's say a coach has 1 full scholarship's worth of athletic money left. He needs to add 3 more scholarship players, 2 of whom are pitchers. One is a star pitcher and it is going to take a 75% athletic scholarship to get him. The rules say he has to give the other two players at least 25% each. He's got to come up with at least 125% but he only has 100%. If that position player happens to be top notch academically he can offer a 10% athletic scholarship and academic money will take care of the rest. He still has a problem. The better of the two pitchers, the "franchise" player, barely managed to be eligible academically at all, but he gives him a 75% athletic scholarship as he's worth a lot of wins. Now he has a choice between two kids for that final pitching spot. One doesn't qualify for academic money, the other does. He can't give the kid who doesn't qualify for academic money a 15% athletic scholarship even though that is all he has left because the minimum is 25%. So he gives the 15% scholarship he has left to the strong academic kid because between his 15% and the 50% the kid gets academically he's well over the 25% minimum. By bringing in two strong academic players he was able to get the one star pitcher he needs to make the NCAAs.

I may be missing something, as I'm far from understanding the rules on this.

CADad,
Your concept makes my head spin.

No way (with trying to achieve better APR), if I am the coach am I giving 75% to a player who has questionable academics. Pitchers who get 75% and up usually have the grades and ability to justify that type of scholarship. The coach STILL has to answer to his boss about what he gives and why. I would offer less and let him walk if I have to, I am not going to depend on ONE player to get me to a championship. What I am going to do, is assemble the best team on the field that I can, with what I have to work with and depend upon them all.

TPM:

As usual, I agree with you. In my hypothetical college baseball program, I "spent" most of my budget on impact starting pitchers and power hitters and tried to find "fill in players" around that nucleus who would cost me NO MONEY from my athletic scholarship budget. There are a hundred different hyptheticals that we could think of to posit that would demonstrate the same conclusion. The difficult reality facing real coaches under the new rules is compounded by the fact that they will in 2008 have whatever they have with regard to undergraduate baseball talent in school and scholarship money that will be freed up with the exit of this senior class. Therefore, their needs are much more sepcific and immediate for next year's incoming class of transfers, jucos and freshmen. Maybe they MUST recruit 2 impact starting pitchers AND a center fielder who can hit the ground running. If the players leaving the program in 2008 only yield 2 full scholarships, what is the coach to do? I certainly do not envy his dilemma.

CollegeParent:

I think we are on the same page here. What I was trying to explain with my long winded hypothetical was I believe under the new rules (especially the 25% requirement) college baseball players that need finiancial aid to go to college AND are qualified under NCAA rules to receive academic aid in lieu of a baseball scholarship will be sought after and recruited harder by coaches under the new rules than they were under the old rules where three or four thousand dollars a year might be enough to get a young man to commit. A back up 2B, a long reliever, a utility player that plays several positions well who costs a coach nothing in NCAA countable scholarship aid is more valuable to the team than the same role player that must receive at least 25% of his aid from the limited baseball scholarship pool. Consequently, the smart coach will seek out those student athletes more than in the past. But, as you say, only time will tell.

I certainly agree with you that any coach that gets caught trying to put a square peg into a round hole by giving academic or need based aid to a player that would not be eligible for it if he were not a player will get the coach into a world of hurt with the NCAA.

TW344

quote:

I "spent" most of my budget on impact starting pitchers and power hitters and tried to find "fill in players" around that nucleus who would cost me NO MONEY from my athletic scholarship budget.

Maybe they MUST recruit 2 impact starting pitchers AND a center fielder who can hit the ground running. If the players leaving the program in 2008 only yield 2 full scholarships, what is the coach to do? I certainly do not envy his dilemma.

TW344 - Interesting stuff and here is another slant to it. Even though some coaches may satisfy these type of roster requirements with all or a portion of the needs via academic scholarship (i.e., 3 spots needed to fill with 2 athletic scholarships), another strategy which I think might perhaps be just as effective would be recruiting 2-way players. UVA had a great one last year in Sean Doolittle. Tim Hudson comes to mind as well and my son's team has several of them. They could have given them a full ride yet effectively they only counted on the roster for 50% of each role provided. If the coach could get a RHP and a centerfielder in the same player for example, he can achieve similar results you have outlined. Thus, I am not sure they would not look for that type of player before settling for a kid who strongest suit might be his ability to garner an academic scholarship. At the same time, smart athletes have always been coveted - old or new rules. Interesting conversation nonetheless.

Another aspect to the new rules the way I under stand them is, teams this year are limited to 30 scholarship playes per roster and 27 in 09, this would include athlectic or academic. Anyone recieving money counts towards the total allowed.

quote:

Another aspect to the new rules the way I under stand them is, teams this year are limited to 30 scholarship playes per roster and 27 in 09, this would include athlectic or academic. Anyone recieving money counts towards the total allowed.

The roster limit numbers mentioned above are correct. However, players receiving only academic money (and not even $1 of athletic money) do not count toward the 27/30 max total. They would be technically considered non-counters (recruited walk-ons). Below is a quote from the NCAA's site:

"...maximum limit of 27 counters (number of baseball student-athletes receiving athletics aid).... Additionally, institutions would be limited to a maximum of 35 total baseball student-athletes on their roster, regardless of their source of financial aid (if any)."

quote:

Originally posted by ClevelandDad:

TW344 - Interesting stuff and here is another slant to it. Even though some coaches may satisfy these type of roster requirements with all or a portion of the needs via academic scholarship (i.e., 3 spots needed to fill with 2 athletic scholarships), another strategy which I think might perhaps be just as effective would be recruiting 2-way players. UVA had a great one last year in Sean Doolittle. Tim Hudson comes to mind as well and my son's team has several of them. They could have given them a full ride yet effectively they only counted on the roster for 50% of each role provided. If the coach could get a RHP and a centerfielder in the same player for example, he can achieve similar results you have outlined. Thus, I am not sure they would not look for that type of player before settling for a kid who strongest suit might be his ability to garner an academic scholarship. At the same time, smart athletes have always been coveted - old or new rules. Interesting conversation nonetheless.

CD,
I strongly believe that many programs in general do achieve this goal, keeping roster limits reasonable. I have seen many players play multi positions in the larger programs, ex. Matt Weiters from Tech, pitcher and catcher. There have been numerous players at Clemson who have done the same, most may not be familiar to you, ex. Kris Harvey, starting pitcher and DH, 1B drafted second round, Colin Mahoney, catcher and pitcher. Clemson now has some multi talented players now, DJ Mitchell and another Addison Johnson. This is not a new concept. The problem is/was, most coaches don't spend a lot of time searching for multi talented players, now they will have to.

quote:

Originally posted by TRhit:
Spoke with a Divsiion I coach yesterday---not all of the new regs are set in stone !!!!

TR - I've seen you mention this in a couple threads. Can you elaborate?

BEEZER

This is still a load of discussion going on within the ranks---can you tell me what is happen? --many coaches I speak to cannot