How would you improve baseball in the B1G?

[BOJ]

It's been kicked around for a while now that the only sticky wicket with our move to the B1G is the lack of quality baseball played in the conference.

 

In the interest of keeping our minds occupied while we watch MA muddle through the spring/early summer and wait for July 1 to arrive, what would you do to improve the quality of baseball being played in the B1G?

 

I've got two ideas, but I don't know how feasible or realistic they are--one is a network-driven "Renaissance" of B1G baseball accomplished by getting rid of antiquated B1G scholarship rules (e.g. freezing a scholarship when a player leaves for the draft). Two is implementing a focus on scheduling quality OOC opponents--all in an effort to ultimately improve the value of product (B1G Baseball) and get people to watch.

 

The first suggestion would take some wrangling, as there must be some reason why the B1G has held on to such a disruptive scholarship rule.

 

The second suggestion would not only be feasible, it would leverage the Big 10 Network asset in order to get quality teams with little TV presence (read: no SEC, Big XII teams) on their network. This way you have quality teams, even if they're not B1G teams, playing on your network and you gradually improve B1G baseball (read: if you want to be the best, you have to play the best). Not unlike the B1G/SEC showdown in basketball, a Pac-12/B1G Baseball showdown could be concocted, or even include MVC or other baseball conferences that often churn out a few good teams.

 

Please feel free to rip these suggestions to shreds as only a message board poster can.

Sorry for not reading all the posts to this point: as to # 1 I do not know enough information at all about it. However I did find an interesting article on point # 2 (which I cannot locate now, but will try to find the link); the jist was that Big Ten teams have a real hard time finding quality OOC southern teams (the annual powerhouses in baseball) to schedule games so their OOC ends up being weak, while there are some very good baseball teams in the Big Ten they can't get the ranking to make it into the world series b/c of OOC scheduling. Whether that is true or not I don't know, but imagine trying to get Texas, LSU, etc. to play in Ann Arbor in a very cool April when they have no reason to.

[BOJ]

The problem really is the weather. Why would a prized recruit come to a B10 school when the first half of your season is all away games. As an avid baseball fan myself, I wish it could be different, but the warm weather is just not here in March. Plain and simple. Weather wise, there is a reason MLB doesn't start to around April 1st. This is also the reason why ice hockey is the number 3 college sport for much of the B10.

This is a good point, with PSU joing, the BiG will have its own hockey league, I believe the only "BCS" conference to have one. Hockey is a big college sport (in the BiG), we just don't have the weather to compete with the southern teams on baseball. Even though we occassionally put a very good team into the world series, I think Nebraksa addition will help with this though (the baseball thing, maybe even they get the hockey team playing in that new basketball arena). The new BiG hockey league will already be the absolutly premiere hockey league but get Nebraska in there too and I would imagine the national champion comes from the Big every year for the next 10

[Ratt Mhule]

The problem really is the weather. Why would a prized recruit come to a B10 school when the first half of your season is all away games. As an avid baseball fan myself, I wish it could be different, but the warm weather is just not here in March. Plain and simple. Weather wise, there is a reason MLB doesn't start to around April 1st. This is also the reason why ice hockey is the number 3 college sport for much of the B10.

This is a good point, with PSU joing, the BiG will have its own hockey league, I believe the only "BCS" conference to have one. Hockey is a big college sport (in the BiG), we just don't have the weather to compete with the southern teams on baseball. Even though we occassionally put a very good team into the world series, I think Nebraksa addition will help with this though (the baseball thing, maybe even they get the hockey team playing in that new basketball arena). The new BiG hockey league will already be the absolutly premiere hockey league but get Nebraska in there too and I would imagine the national champion comes from the Big every year for the next 10

 

I don't think UNL has a hockey team. UN-Omaha is the hockey team from Nebraska. They are pretty good team, but it is not UNL.

[AZ4NE1]

Allow tackling.

 

Maybe combine it with dodgeball.