NCAA issues public reprimand to Coastal Carolina AD Chance Miller from 2025 College World Series

Coastal Carolina‘s incredible Cinderella run to the 2025 College World Series National Championship series vs. eventual champion LSU was one of college baseball’s best stories last season. That was the case despite it ending in a dud when Chanticleers head coach Kevin Schnall and assistant coach Matt Schilling were ejected early in the decisive Game 2, which the sixth-ranked Tigers won 5-3 to sweep the championship series.

The costly ejections prompted a public repudiation of both the NCAA and the officials responsible for the highly controversial ejections from Coastal Carolina officials. That includes athletic director Chance Miller.

“The ejections of head coach Kevin Schnall and assistant coach Matt Schilling in the bottom of the first inning drastically altered the trajectory of a must-win game for our team,” Miller’s statement read. “These decisions were made with an alarming level of haste, without an attempt at de-escalation, and deprived our student-athletes of the leadership they have relied on throughout a historic postseason run.

“This is not about a single call — it’s about process and professionalism. In the biggest moment of the college baseball season, our program and its student-athletes deserved better.”

Five months later, the NCAA responded with its own public reprimand of Miller for his “misconduct” at the 2025 College World Series. The Division I Baseball Committee specifically cited the Coastal Carolina AD for “berating the NCAA national coordinator of umpires in a public setting and later NCAA staff in the hallways of Charles Schwab Field (in) Omaha.”

The D-I Baseball committee determined Miller violated NCAA Bylaw 31.02.4, which defines “misconduct” in an NCAA championship as “any act of dishonesty, unsportsmanlike conduct, unprofessional behavior or breach of law, occurring from the time the championship field is announced through the end of the championship, that discredits the event or intercollegiate athletics.”

The public reprimand was not the only punishment. Miller is forbidden from attending the next region-round game that Coastal Carolina qualifies for, presumably during the upcoming season.

“The NCAA Division I Baseball Committee strongly believes this type of behavior is unacceptable and has no place at any NCAA championship event,” committee chair and Southeastern Louisiana AD Jay Artigues said in the NCAA release Friday. “As an athletics director, Mr. Miller is expected to uphold the highest standards of conduct, and his actions fell well short of that expectation.”

Coastal Carolina criticizes NCAA, officials in statement on Kevin Schnall, Matt Schilling ejections

The Coastal Carolina ejections began when Schnall stepped onto the field to seemingly complain about umpire Angel Campos’ strike call. The umpire motioned for him to back up and when Schnall didn’t obey, Campos ejected him from the game.

From there, Schnall stormed onto the field, going after the umpire who had thrown him out of the game. Another official attempted to step between Schnall and Campos, but was knocked to the ground in the process, further escalating the situation.

Schall eviscerated that unnamed umpire for making a reactionary call during his postgame press conference following LSU’s 5-3 victory.

“There was a guy who came in, extremely aggressively, tripped over Campos’ foot. Embarrassed in front of 25,000. Immediately goes two-game suspension and said bumping the umpire. Immediately does that,” Schnall explained at the time. “There was no bump. He was embarrassed. I shouldn’t be held accountable for a grown man’s athleticism.

“They’ll retract it, though. Because now it’s excessive and the reason why it was excessive, because I was trying to say I didn’t bump him,” Schnall added. “It is what it is.”

— On3’s Thomas Goldkamp contributed to this report.