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Bad Things

I can't decide if it's a healthy sign that my relationship with my readers has grown to the point where it's a continuing conversation or if it's a bad sign that folks are worried, but I got several notes after my last column on celebration from readers sharing things that concerned them and asking what was worrying me. I don't know that I want to make this an annual thing, but I thought I'd take a look at what the worry list looks like right now. Each of these could probably carry its own column, but who wants to kvetch all year?

• The season is going to get shorter. They tried to sneak this one through in a manner worthy of the White House Press Office, releasing the memo on July 4, but the other shoe dropped when the Competition Cabinet announced that the other side of the common start date proposal is to shorten the season to 52 games. I like baseball. Less baseball is bad.

• The rich keep getting richer. There are occasional exceptions like Tulane or Rice, but the top tier corresponding to the size of the tournament field seems to be increasingly compressed into the big five power conferences. The problem isn't so much at the very top as it is that there are very few non-competitors left in those leagues. Off the top of my head, I can count only eight teams between the ACC, SEC, Big 12, Big West, and Pac 10 that I would actually be surprised to see in the top 10 at the end of next year, as big spending on facilities has paid off. This isn't bad in and of itself -- that's more good baseball teams overall, after all -- and the solution isn't to limit bids to top conference teams, but it does mean that some interesting programs like Northwestern State or Georgia Southern without football-based budgets may be getting squeezed out.

• The face of the average player isn't getting any darker, and his accent isn't getting any less American. Racial issues are always complicated (I'm from Mississippi; I know this better than most of you can imagine), and there are all sorts of socioeconomic explanations why integration isn't progressing in the game. Then there's the Larry Cochell incident. On a different but equally worrisome front, the increasing internationalization of the pro game is almost entirely bypassing the college game. As long as we're only pulling from part of the talent pool, we're going to be limiting ourselves.

• The Southeast continues to languish at the very top levels. Notwithstanding Florida's run through the weak side of the bracket to be the sacrificial lamb for Texas, there really hasn't been a serious SEC contender since 2000. The ACC has been almost completely irrelevant anywhere but the RPI the last couple of years. Personal preferences as a fan of an SEC team aside, this can be bad for the game. Love them, loathe them, or wish they would bring the RV to the parking lot and just stay out there with the grill and the cooler, it was good for the growth of the game to have a five-time national champ from the section of the country with the best attendance.

• What's the deal with the Arizona thing? When the second place team in a power, football-rich conference withdraws their bid to host because, "they can't afford to lose any more money on baseball," it may be a sign that we're still not quite there as a sport.

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  Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> Bad Things

  About the author, Boyd Nation