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Bad news for college baseball

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Aaron Suttles, Jan 26, 2011.

  1. cranberry

    cranberry Well-Known Member

    Whereas basketball and football offer large numbers of full scholarships, college baseball suffers from a lack of scholarships. Typically baseball scholarships are split between players, forcing people from less fortunate socio-economic backgrounds out of the mix. This is why college baseball is so white and it plays a large role in why MLB is losing African American players. It's an issue that deserves attention but gets little.
     
  2. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    Poor American kids are excluded from baseball long before the college level. Usually it's by about age 12.
     
  3. Jake_Taylor

    Jake_Taylor Well-Known Member

    Depends on where you are. At a lot of rural Southern high school teams are made up of lower-middle class and poorer kids. They might have a disadvantage in that they aren't playing in the showcase tournaments and on travel teams in the fall and summer, but if they hit 90 on the radar gun, you can bet there will be college coaches and pro scouts sniffing around.
     
  4. BrianGriffin

    BrianGriffin Active Member

    Funny story. Another school we both once covered recently set an attendance record for women's basketball. This was achieved by the coach, who is a real promoter-type, going around neighborhoods between the school and the off-campus arena and stuffing mailboxes with free tickets to the game and a personal invitation from her to go to the game. That, plus an undefeated start to conference play won many over and they came and broke the attendance record (or so they say).

    Well, the criticism is it shouldn't count because while they may have had, say, 2,000 in the arena (made up figure, I have no clue what the attendance was) the usual 100-200 actually bought a ticket. So, the critics say, actual attendance should be reported as 200.

    So people are really confused now.

    It would be funny if they had the Attendance and paid attendance. Where with LSU baseball, the box may say: A -- 10,000 (paid), 6,224 (actual), this school may have a box that says: A -- 178 (paid), 2,121 (actual).
     
  5. zebracoy

    zebracoy Guest

    Anybody who continues to confuse the actual attendance figure and the number of tickets sold is just dense.

    If you replace the word "Attendance" or the letter A in a box score with the words "Tickets Sold" or letters TS or whatnot, then you have it spot on.

    Once that's accepted, you'll stop losing sleep at night. Teams, stadiums, schools, etc. will never release turnstile attendance because the tickets sold is the higher figure 95 percent of the time and, thus, looks good.

    I never understand how this continues to be an issue - especially for those of us who have to include attendance figures in gamers.
     
  6. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    If college basketball players couldn't leave until after their junior year, or until they turned 21, like college baseball players, then I doubt there would be any outcry at all. A college baseball player at least has to pretend to be a student/athlete for three years, not six months.

    Please. Oregon State, NCAA champion, 2006. Oregon State, NCAA champion, 2007. Fresno State, NCAA champion, 2008. UCLA, NCAA runner-up, 2010. Three national titles, and a runner-up finish, in the last five years and the West in on par with the Sun Belt Conference?


    That said, Kendall did a nice job, even if he was generally ACC/SEC-oriented.
     
  7. BrianGriffin

    BrianGriffin Active Member

    The Sun Belt as a region, not a conference. Meaning the West is on par with the South/Southwest, not the Sun Belt Conference. I'm told that one may include SoCal and Arizona in the Sun Belt region, so maybe I should have been more clear. I've always thought of "Sun Belt" as describing the region from Texas to the South Atlantic states and not the western states. Maybe it's because that's the SBC's footprint, ha. Of course, if the SBC's footprint describes the region, I'd have to include Colorado in the Sun Belt, at least until Denver joins the WAC.
     
  8. Aaron Suttles

    Aaron Suttles New Member

    Access is MUCH better than football. Of course, any access is better than what we get for football. But being at the park 4-5 times a week (including practice) helps you get to know the players better, which leads to better features, etc.
     
  9. Aaron Suttles

    Aaron Suttles New Member

    Well played, sir.
     
  10. Johnny Dangerously

    Johnny Dangerously Well-Known Member

    I get it, zebracoy. And there are teams that release turnstile counts. It bothers me when there's reporting that does not make the distinction and lists the higher
    figure as attendance. It bothers me when reporters do it and SIDs do it. It bothers me that the NCAA attendance champion is the one who sells the most tickets, whether or not any get used.

    No matter how accepted a practice it is, it's lying. I don't like that in reporting the news, and it bothers me when my profession can be complicit in the lie or too lazy or ignorant to even know -- and I've seen plenty of each instance.
     
  11. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    Ok, my bad. It just bugs me that many (not yourself) who should know better poor-mouth West Coast baseball, which obviously must suck because it wins so many NCAA titles.

    As an aside, people trying to save Cal baseball have raised about $15 million to endow the program. But the school says it must raise $25 million, and endow all four dropped sports, not just baseball, for reinstatement to even be an option. Someone at Cal doesn't want baseball to come back. They're probably already fighting to see who gets to build on the Evans Diamond site.
     
  12. SoCalDude

    SoCalDude Active Member

    I was typing in college schedules last night and came across Cal on somebody's schedule. I must have missed that the program was reinstated. I went to the website and saw stories about the preseason ranking and the recruiting class. And, the schedule.
    I'm wondering how I missed the reinstatement.
     
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