MULE’: Cuts Should Not Affect Baseball

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With the nation in an economic recession, what’s next for college athletics - especially baseball?

by Marty Mule’
Tiger Rag Featured Columnist

(At left) Former LSU athletic director Skip Bertman said there are other places to trim budgets without having it impact college baseball.

Despite a couple of going-through-the-motions victories in last weekend’s NCAA Baton Rouge Regional, LSU found a way to return to a super regional for the second straight year.

And Omaha seems to be just around the corner – again.

Is there any doubt LSU is on top of its game?

But the question is: where does the game itself stand?

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the recession has put college baseball in dire straits. Other sports are in trouble, too, of course. Dozens of colleges have trimmed their overall athletic expenses – traveling less (or less expensively), reducing off-season competition, eliminating non-essential expenses like media guides. Some schools have frozen or laid off workers in their athletic departments, reports the Chronicle.

Seventeen different sports – like softball, soccer, volleyball – have been eliminated from some athletics programs. To overcome a $2.5 million deficit, the University of Cincinnati announced it would stop giving scholarship aid for men’s cross-country, swimming and track.

Teams with large rosters that bring in little revenue are usually the first to go – or the next to go, that is.

Does that description fit the most popular spring sport in the Sunbelt?

Only a handful of baseball programs generate enough revenue to offset expenses, says the Chronicle. The average Division I baseball team loses nearly $700,000 a year, more than the financial losses in any other men’s sport, according to the NCAA. Only about 10 percent of Division I programs average more than 2,000 fans a game.

LSU is the exception, notes the Chronicle, making about $2 million a year on ticket sales alone. A year ago LSU drew more than 7,000 a game, the most of any big-time program.

More typical is Vermont, which averaged 246 a game. Vermont is one of two schools, along with Northern Iowa, to have dropped baseball. That wouldn’t be quite so earth-shaking by itself except that if the trend continues, programs like LSU might be a little more hard-pressed to find out of conference competition.

Baseball schools most at risk are those in the Northeast and Midwest. Due to colder climates, these programs are at a disadvantage early in the season because they have to travel south so often to play in warmer climates.

LSU traditionally opens the season with opponents like that. The Tigers opened the 2009 season with Villanova and also played the likes of Illinois and Harvard early in the season. Money and time might not be worth it to schools like this to continue doing it much longer.

“My take on it,’’ said James Pollard, the athletics director at Iowa State, who has closely studied athletics finances, “is that over the next year we’ll see a lot more sports get chopped if the economy plays out the way it has so far.”

(At left) Skip Bertman revolutionized college baseball at LSU and the south building the Tigers into a perennial national power in the 1980s.

Gene Stephenson, coach of perennial CWS contender Wichita State, agrees.

“If things continue to go down the road we’re on, you might only see BCS conference schools participating (in baseball).’’

Adding to the case against baseball, states the Chronicle, is that the sport is one of the worst-performing programs in terms of academics. Last year 30 percent of baseball programs did not meet the NCAA’s minimum Academic Progress Rate standard. As a result some teams were penalized by college sports’ governing body. That stat doesn’t help baseball’s cause in the eyes of academicians.

Still, Skip Bertman, who transformed the sport from a springtime pastime to a big-money important sport at LSU and in the South, coaching the Tigers to five national championships, told the Chronicle he thinks baseball is largely safe for the time being at many schools, adding that baseball’s brand appeal makes it an unlikely target for total elimination.

“My feeling is, if you’ve got to cut, there are other sports,” Bertman said.

But not necessarily.

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Marty Mule’ can be reached at MJM981two@Charter.net.