On the one hand, Division I baseball features one of the most unique and vibrant championships in all of college sports. The 2005 Men's College World Series drew a record 263,475 fans to Omaha's Rosenblatt Stadium. Five of the 10 highest-attended sessions in CWS history occurred this year. And even more exposure is being generated by the ESPN family of networks broadcasting the regional and super regional rounds.

On the other hand, though, Division I baseball is facing challenges both internally and externally. While the sport isn't in a crisis mode, stakeholders realize there are issues to iron out to keep the sport at the top of its game.

One of the most pressing concerns, for example, is developing uniform start dates to the playing and practice season. The Division I Baseball Issues Committee has proposed February 1 as the first permissible date for practice and the last Friday in February as the initial date of competition. The proposal contains a 45-day window in the fall for coaches to use at their discretion to prepare for the playing season.

The start-date issue has been contentious for several reasons, many weather-related. Programs in the northern part of the country, for example, would prefer an even later start date that would allow them to schedule fewer games away from home early in the season. But that would push the CWS later into the summer, and the Division I Board of Directors already has sent a clear message that the season should end before July 1.

Some institutions in the Sun Belt would prefer to keep the status quo. Under the Baseball Issues Committee proposal, the CWS is scheduled to end in June through 2014.

"There isn't a magic wand for the start-date issue," said Rick Chryst, commissioner of the Mid-American Conference and a member of the Baseball Issues Committee. "It's not so much about competitive equity, either. It's really about considering baseball as a national sport. I think we've started in the right place. We'll see how the proposal moves through the system."

High and inside

While the baseball community has a hard time agreeing on a start date, most stakeholders see eye to eye that a proposal from the Championships/Competition Cabinet to reduce the playing season from 56 to 52 games was a brush-back pitch.

The cabinet cited student-athlete well-being as reason to support the cut, and members felt the original proposal's compaction of the season would have a negative effect. Some already believed that baseball's lower graduation rates are attributable to the sport's time constraints that in turn infringe upon student-athletes' academic pursuits. The length of the current season also limits summer-school opportunities for student-athletes.

While baseball people respect those concerns, they have trouble reconciling why the same logic wasn't applied to Division
I-A football when its season was expanded to 12 games.

"If the powers that be want to look at reducing games for all sports, I guess you would have to feel it's an equitable thing," said Charlie Carr, a senior associate athletics director at Florida State University who chairs the Division I Baseball Committee. "It's somewhat disturbing, though, that this singles out baseball."

The Baseball Issues Committee toyed with the idea of reducing the number of games in the regular season when it became apparent that the CWS would have to end before July 1. But after studying the matter, the committee felt it had reached a reasonable compromise that retains the number of games and provides a manageable season length.

Mike Gaski, head coach at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and current president of USA Baseball, said he is puzzled by the cabinet's amendment.

"I find it interesting that we would do several studies, give a recommendation and then have that recommendation disregarded and say, 'Hey, we should cut some games,' " said Gaski. "That's frustrating. No other group studying the issue recommended reducing games. The truth of the matter is if student-athletes are not playing games, they're going to be practicing. (Reducing games) doesn't make an awful lot of sense."

Chryst feels that some in the Division I membership have misunderstood the Baseball Issues Committee's work.

"At times, it was mistakenly referred to as a season expansion instead of a season shift," he said. "What our process deserves is to get a full and fair hearing out of all this. No one on the issues committee felt we were the final word. We're a humble group."

Championships/Competition Cabinet Chair Chris Dawson said the amendment to reduce the number of games emerged from a discussion of the bigger picture.

"The cabinet was not singling out baseball or targeting it for reduction, but rather looking at the entire context of the playing season due to the Baseball Issues Committee recommendation," said Dawson, an assistant commissioner with the Pacific-10 Conference. "Based on the discussion at the cabinet meeting, the impetus for the modification in the number of games from 56 to 52 came chiefly from a concern about compaction of the schedule, once a start date and a 13-week season were established."

The proposal has distinct elements that can be voted on separately, however. That would allow the Division I Management Council to defeat the playing-season reduction, for example, while adopting the Baseball Issues Committee's original recommendations -- if it chooses to do so.

Interestingly, even though not everyone agrees with the Baseball Issues Committee's proposals, both the cabinet and the Division I Baseball Committee have acknowledged the importance of the group's work. The baseball committee in fact has asked for six individuals -- two from the ABCA, two from the Collegiate Commissioners Association and two from the Baseball Rules Committee -- to attend its annual meeting discuss various nonchampionships issues. That structure would allow the work of the Baseball Issues Committee to continue without establishing a new permanent committee.

ERA, RBI, APR

Another important issue for baseball is the Academic Progress Rate (APR), which figures to become as important an abbreviation as the traditional ones found in box scores and stat sheets.

Since Division I baseball is an equivalency sport (teams are granted 11.7 scholarships annually), grant-in-aid penalties assessed for academic under-achievement should have a profound effect.

With that in mind, NCAA President Myles Brand appointed a Baseball Academic Progress Rate Study Group to examine the impact the new standards will have on the sport.

The group supported the Committee on Academic Performance's recommendation and subsequent Board approval of adjustments in the APR calculation when academically eligible student-athletes leave school to pursue a career in professional athletics.

The study group found that baseball would be significantly affected by retention losses if the adjustment were not allowed. For example, in 2003-04, a total of 523 baseball student-athletes, almost 7 percent of all baseball student-athletes, were drafted. Of those, 320 (23.5 percent) would have been counted as 1-for-2s under the original APR standards.

The percentage of what would have been 1 for 2s in baseball is significantly higher than the 5.5 percent in football and the 3 percent in basketball.

"We certainly are not against high academic standards, but given the uniqueness of our sport, the pro draft and number of transfers because of the easy transfer rule, we're losing a number of eligible players who are going elsewhere, and we're losing retention points," said Dave Keilitz, the executive director of the American Baseball Coaches Association.

Keilitz and others thought the NCAA's will  ingness to consider baseball's individual needs was a home run.

Gaski of North Carolina-Greensboro said, "Not only was the answer to the question of whether every sport must do the same thing and by the absolute same rules 'No,' but also that we needed to move forward with an understanding of what was best for each sport."

One-time transfer

But while early departures for the professional ranks is an issue in baseball, even more troubling is the sport's transfer rate. Unlike their football and basketball counterparts, Division I baseball student-athletes are allowed to transfer to another Division I program without having to sit out a year.

Transfer issues are compounded by the fact that as an equivalency sport, the piecemeal grants-in-aid typically aren't enough to keep a student-athlete at the school if he feels he can get more playing time elsewhere.

With little deterrent, then, a transient student-athlete population has become part of the college baseball landscape, and many stakeholders believe it's an issue that must be addressed.

Keilitz surveyed his ABCA membership and found that 56 percent of the Division I coaches would like to see the sport's transfer rule be like football and basketball. That's a shift from previous years in which similar solicitations showed coaches favoring the more liberal transfer policy.

But that was before the APR, Keilitz said.

"Coaches are now realizing that not only are they losing the transfer, but it's also affecting my APR," he said.

While the Board of Directors made provisions for early departures to the pros, the presidents did not provide the same APR flexibility for transfers. However, they did acknowledge that the transfer issue warranted further discussion.

The baseball study group wants to amend the APR calculation so that a baseball program would not lose more than 10 percent of the team's possible retention points for student-athletes who transfer to another institution while in good academic standing.

Some think a stricter transfer rule also would limit the practice of programs trying to either stockpile student-athletes or "run them off" through what essentially are tryouts.

"There is an argument about running off student-athletes, and baseball is a part of that," said Florida State's Carr. "It certainly is a valid argument. But this is a recommendation in which we've asked for a percentage of transfers who leave in good standing, because you can't always tell whether they left on their own initiative or someone else's."

It may be an uphill climb for those who want the one-time transfer rule tightened. The Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee wants the rule to remain the way it is. A change in baseball also may prompt a desire in other sports.

The proposal, though, is at least on the table. The West Coast Conference has submitted legislation specifying that the one-time transfer exception not be available in baseball. The Division I Management Council will react to the measure in January.

11.7 isn't enough

Baseball programs are allowed 11.7 scholarships, but their squad sizes routinely can be somewhere between 27 and 33 members. That has led to discussions about ways to increase the amount of aid and the number of student-athletes who receive the aid.

"One possibility would be to increase the 11.7 to, say, 14 for room, board, tuition, fees and books," Keilitz said. "We're also looking at a number for tuition-fees only. We don't have a number yet, but 26 or 27 would put most everybody on equal footing when it comes to the cost to the student-athlete."

Scholarships are a major concern with the cost of education, Gaski said, noting that other sports more closely align the amount of equivalencies with roster size. "Scholarship allotments for women playing volleyball, softball and soccer are closer to the percentage of the number of players than it is for baseball."

Looking ahead

On the field, college baseball is receiving more exposure via cable sports networks such as College Sports Television and ESPNU. The sport also has carved out its own niche when compared to Major League Baseball and the minor-league game.

While the Division I Baseball Committee is pleased with the growth of the championship, which now consists of a 64-team bracket with 16, four-team double-elimination regionals, there are improvements to be made there as well.

The committee is recommending to the cabinet this fall in fact that super regionals be conducted at predetermined sites -- including those with minor league facilities -- beginning with the 2008 championship (see story on page 11).

"We certainly don't want to re-invent the wheel, but by the same token we want to grow the sport," Carr said. "The super regionals have become so popular. It was a great step for college baseball. We don't want to change something that's already good, but if we can make it better we'd certainly like to."

An ABCA survey showed support for predetermined sites.

"Some of the concerns are that wherever you go under the current format, you're going to have a great atmosphere in terms of the crowd," Keilitz said. "With a neutral site, you're not sure what you're getting. You know it's probably going to be fairer, though, because both teams essentially are visitors."

Whatever path the sport takes -- whether it be on championship matters or the APR -- the Baseball Issues Committee is interested in building a consensus through compromise if necessary.

The ABCA's Keilitz appreciates the effort. While it's clear that a happy medium hasn't been reached on matters such as a start date for the playing season, he said, "The only way you get everyone on the same page is to try and create fairness for the majority of the schools.

"I don't know if you can find a sport with more diverse needs than baseball."