And it's not just the playing. Factor in practice, working out, travel time (when you can study if you are not too tired), and then some social life, and it can be a real challenge. That said, some kids can handle it and the rest become Associate ADs at Penn State.
Why are schools - at any level - paying for sports programs? In a more perfect world, they would not.
That’s what my son did. He played baseball almost year round from the time he was in grade school. He did play basketball in high school, which is also pretty much year round, and his commitment to baseball hurt him in basketball because he missed a lot of the summer workouts and tournaments. In college it was baseball year round between workouts, BP, the season, the summer league, etc.
No doubt this was a particularly bad year for HS baseball weather. As you suggest, a move to the fall would eliminate kids who play football so that will never happen. One thought I have had - and it brings with it its own problems - is to shorten the HS baseball season and instead of starting around March 20, maybe begin around April 10. This would necessarily require playing 4 games a week and this will place a greater premium on pitching depth; most good high school teams have two good pitchers plus another two who can give some innings. That gets you through a week with 2 games. But this would idea would, in theory, help to eliminate the games played in ridiculous March-early April weather. Granted, April and May can bring a lot of rain so pushing the schedule back does not guarantee much.
The problem you would have with shortening the baseball season is nobody will come to PSU to play baseball. Remember, these kids want to play big time D-1 ball and many, if not all, have ambitions of playing pro ball. PSU, and all teams in the north, face the weather disadvantage. If you now tell them they are going to play for just a month or so, I can't imagine too many kids will sign on for that deal.
Yep.
And the total savings will probably be about equal to 1/10 of the outlay for AAADs......
But - remember - as Sandy has said 1,000 times : “Its all about the kids”.
I'm with you Bison. Playing 4 games a week will also force coaches to develop those second tier pitchers rather than just throw 2-3 kids all season.
BOHICA? Agreed.
Why no announced development program?
I would not want to try to voluntarily get inside the heads of the PSU brain trust (it must be dark, damp, and scary in there)........
But I would imagine two key factors:
1) They knew they were not going to be able to raise much (and Sandy is much more of a "raise prices and charge for everything" kinda' gal..... not exactly an innovative thinker)
2) They had plans to go elsewhere for the funds (University-backed Debt)
But that is just one person's impression - - - from the eyes, ears, and brain of someone who's been watching their actions for a while.
Hell, Big Gulp Barron has never even come back to explain how the Lasch Building Renovation money came to be (relatively "chump change")
Drop baseball and softball. Students and alums don't give a spit about the sports on campus. There are very few fans to justify the megabucks spent.
While I agree that amount spent has not been worth the return, you cant justify cutting these sports as there are more programs with less attendance and money lost than those two. I would even agree in that the NCAA season is too long at approximately 50 games for each, but also as the above posters pointed out, school is over, there is no loss of class time now. Maybe they could start the season a week or two later and only play 40 but even so, this is the northeast, they have to travel to play games in the south and west during March and april.
