The NCAA Baseball Research Panel is charged with recommending certification protocol as well as specifications for baseballs and nonwood baseball bats.

It is a seven-person group that was created by the NCAA Executive Committee in March 1999 and is composed of experts in medicine, mathematics, research, physics, engineering and biomechanics.

"We were asked to look at two issues," said panel member Michael Carroll, professor of engineering and retired dean of the school of engineering at Rice University.

"One was risk and safety and the other was competitive balance between the offense and the defense -- in other words, the integrity of the game."

Carroll said the panel eventually came to the conclusion that trying to measure the necessary reaction time for the pitcher was difficult due to the many variables involved, including (but not limited to) how fast the pitch was thrown, how fast the bat was swung and how fast that particular pitcher could react.

But there was consensus in the baseball community that there was an acceptable level of risk in baseball, and that level of risk was directly tied to wooden bats.

"Every sport has some level of risk of injury, and the risk (of being hit by a batted ball) was deemed acceptable in the wooden-bat era," Carroll said.

"And, both purposes (safety and integrity of the game) would be served. So we thought it made sense to zero in on a wood-like standard. I felt very comfortable with that, and I still do."

The first two prongs of the standard were in place for the 1999 baseball season. That year, bats could not be any more than three ounces lighter than their weight in inches, and the diameter of the bat at its widest could not exceed 2 5/8 inches.

The third prong of the standard, added for the 2000 season, specified that the batted-ball exit speed -- as measured in the laboratory with a 67 mph swing and a 67 mph pitch -- may not exceed 97 miles per hour.

NCAA Director of Research Todd Petr points out that the 97 mph batted-ball exit speed has been widely misunderstood and compared to potential speeds in the field, which is like comparing apples and oranges.

"We're saying that in that controlled, laboratory condition, that's the top speed a wood bat could perform, allowing for variables in equipment and testing variations," Petr said.

"The hottest hit off a top performance wood bat under those conditions was 96 1Ž2, and we went to 97 to build in some level of accounting for variations in equipment and testing conditions.

"Our goal here was to make an aluminum bat hit like a wood bat under the same conditions. In the field, wood bats hit a lot faster than that. Pitches come in faster, and swings are faster. But everything is swung at the same speed in the laboratory."

Originally, the swing and pitch for the test were at 80 miles per hour to better replicate field conditions, but those speeds on the machine were breaking many of the wooden bats and not permitting them to be tested repeatedly as was necessary to establish a standard.

"We felt confident that a wooden bat would perform the same (at 67 miles per hour) as it would at 80 miles per hour," Carroll said. "And the NCAA asked the panel to stay in place and monitor the tests, which we have done and continue to do."