I hope this happens before Ron Polk dies.

[Todd4State]

http://www.cbssports.com/...to-help-college-baseball



This article talks about a lot of things that I have talked about in the past- MLB helping college baseball with a scholarship fund, using wood bats- and it possibly being a reality!

I sincerely hope it happens. Polk was right about the scholarship limits being ridiculous. Personally, I think it needs to be 25 full scholarships and the other players are allowed to get academic aid. Teams dispense the aid as they see fit. I would also like to see the rosters expanded from 35 to 40.

I also love the idea of MLB partnering with college baseball. Most players nowadays that are from the US are coming from college baseball. It makes sense for MLB to support college baseball since they are getting a ton of players from the college ranks. It will also help baseball players get their education or at least get a good start on it.

 

[grandpa jones]

Hard to get by the Title IX stuff, unless MLB wants to fund softball equally.

 

[Todd4State]

But if MLB is willing to support college baseball, I don't know that there is much the NCAA can do to stop it.

I don't believe the NFL and NBA fund NCAA scholarships, because they don't have to, so I don't know how the NCAA will feel about it.

I've always thought that Title IX was about the NCAA funding men and women's sports "equally" and I don't know that they took into account that an outside source like MLB would ever fund baseball scholarships.

 

[thedog]

but as TitleIX is based upon equalizingpast perceived discrimination, it wouldfollow that the gov't would not allow institutions to have more men's scolarships than womens, regardless of the source. Because isn't Title IX in effect due to previous anti-discrimination litigation.

 

[Johnson85]

Don't do that.

Title IX has forced wrestling programs to be shut down when there were donors willing to completely fund them. Would have cost the school its federal money unless they essentially came up with enough money to fund an additional woman's sport with the same number of scholarships.

So instead of expanding the number of scholarships available using private money, the number of scholarships stayed the same. According to the federal gov't, that's a great result.

 

[patdog]

Total scholarships have to be representative of the male-female student body population. Any changes you make to that ratio have to be in the direction of becoming more compliant rather than less. MLB could fund wood bats, facilities improvements, coaches salaries, but you're not going to see scholarship increases any time soon.</p>