College baseball has seen its popularity grow in leaps in bounds in recent seasons. The game continues to grow thanks to a number of reasons including because more-and-more of the top high school players in the country deciding to play in college instead of going directly to professional baseball.
That theme looks like it might become even more prevalent thanks to proposed rule changes that seem imminent in college basketball.
According to Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger, the college baseball scholarship limit is expanding. The current 11.7 college baseball scholarship limit is spread across the 40-player roster. The proposed new rule would cut the roster limit to 34 players but would set no limits on the number of scholarships.
The rule would effectively go into effect in the fall of 2025 after the 2025 season, giving schools and conferences a full year to decide the best course of action going forward.
Under the current format, schools only give players partial scholarships. Paying for college makes it an unwise financial decision for some kids to go to college instead of going straight to professional baseball. NIL has helped counteract this problem and scholarship expansions would help even more.
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If that rule is passed it will be interesting to see whether specific conferences decide to set scholarship limits or if it will be up to each individual school to decide how many scholarships they give out. The SEC, and certainly Tennessee, is incredibly committed to baseball and would almost certainly be close to giving every player a full scholarship.
But what about other power conferences like the Big 10 and Big 12? The Big 10 fought against the proposal to add a third paid assistant coach in the sport years ago.
The other factor worth monitoring is Title IX and the rule that there must be as many female and male athletes on scholarships at any school. Increasing baseball scholarships from 11.7 to 34 would be a major change that would have to lead to either increased female scholarships or decreased male scholarships elsewhere.
Tennessee baseball is in the midst of the best run in program history. The Vols made the College World Series in three of their last four seasons, won two SEC Regular-Season and Tournament Championships over that time frame and claimed their first ever National Championship last season.
With Tony Vitello at the helm, the Vols program isn’t slowing down. How the program adapts to the new rule changes will be worth following.
One Response
About time