00:00:04
Speaker 1: Hello, everybody.

00:00:05
Speaker 2: J.J. Cooper, Jacob Rudner, Baseball America College Podcast, and today we're diving into some reporting. Jacob has a story up at BaseballAmerica.com about the growing relationship, the growing cooperation that is going on between Major League Baseball and college baseball, and we're going to get into that in some detail, but there is also, I don't want to kind of, I don't want me to kind of rehash it to you. I want Jacob, who wrote the story, who did the reporting, to spell out to you all kind of what stands out here. So Jacob, if you were saying to someone, by the way, we're going to have the link here. You're going to get a lot more if you go over to the story at baseballamerica.com. But if you wanted to give someone a quick summary of what you're reporting, what would that be?

00:00:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, at its core, I think that this is a story about the evolving landscape in the baseball world and the importance of the connections on the MLB side with amateur baseball and, and the ability to kind of have a pulse on each other, whether that's, you know, we'll call it the SEC, which we'll talk about a lot here and the SEC having a pulse on major league baseball's desires and vice versa, major league baseball kind of having a pulse on what the SEC and the ACC and other powers that be at the college baseball level are looking for. And we have seen over the course of the last, really 18 months in the lead up to this offseason when there's going to be a likely labor lockout, there's going to be negotiations about a new CBA, there has become a much more tangible relationship between MLB and college. Yes, a lot of that has been seen in the SEC, and if you read the piece, there is a lot of SEC influence to some of the things that are discussed, whether that's Technology that's being brought into the playing field in college baseball, ABS, which we saw in the SEC tournament last year, was a massive influence of MLB. They had people on hand to be able to help facilitate that. But again, it also goes beyond that. I think if you read the piece, you'll also notice that there is a substantial amount of support that MLB is starting to give to the college game at large. There are conversations about draft timing. that are coming up. And so broadly speaking, I would say that to summarize, this is a story about how there is cooperation, increasing cooperation between college baseball and MLB.

00:02:35
Speaker 2: So, okay. Big picture. Again, this is going to be part reporting, but I am asking you to kind of extrapolate from that as well. If you're a fan of college baseball, or you're a fan of major league baseball. If we fast forward a few years into the future and you said, okay, so there's increased cooperation. I'll start with, there's one example that you use in here that we've already seen, right? Which is if you watch the SEC tournament, baseball tournament last spring, you saw right there an example of MLB college baseball of a sort cooperation, right? Absolutely.

00:03:21
Speaker 3: I mean, that was a clear, maybe one of the most obvious examples of the relationship. Like I said, MLB was hands-on with the implementation of ABS in the SEC tournament. There was a crew of MLB people who were in Hoover, Alabama for that week, who were there to help the conference do things like get it up on the broadcast, display the challenge calls on the video board, and even things down to communicating with umpires and how to facilitate the review and where the review goes, setting up the technology that was necessary, that was a very hand-in-hand process. A little bit lesser known, but also in Hoover this past spring, MLB was very involved in the use of technology in the dugouts. MLB was on hand to help with video review on tablets for players to have access to in games, and they were using MLB software. If the SEC in 2027, we have a story about this as well, Baseball America, if the SEC is.

00:04:18
Speaker 1: Going to proceed... with some.

00:04:20
Speaker 3: Of its desires with technology in the dugout. Mostly review. After a half inning ends, video gets uploaded to a tablet. Players and coaches can review it in the dugout. That is something that is accessible to MLB and professional baseball players.

00:04:33
Speaker 1: If it were to come to fruition, which is.

00:04:35
Speaker 3: The expectation in 2027, that will be the byproduct of cooperation between MLB and the SEC.

00:04:45
Speaker 1: I think as we see.

00:04:46
Speaker 3: ABS get rolled out widely this spring, and that won't be everywhere, and it will only be in conference games. But even the rollout in conference games will involve some cooperation from MLB in certain conferences. I think that's also really important to discuss. In the written reporting, and we're telling you now, it is important to make the distinction that.

00:05:09
Speaker 1: MLB is not involved with everybody.

00:05:12
Speaker 3: Not every conference has a relationship with Major League Baseball. The SEC is kind of the leader in the clubhouse in terms of relationship. The Sun Belt has a very strong relationship with MLB. The ACC and Big 12 have had productive conversations, as I understand it, and you can kind of tear it out from then on, up from the top of college baseball down to the bottom. But this is not necessarily speaking for everybody. That being said, as ABS gets more and more deeply entrenched in college baseball, I think we will continue to see MLB kind of have a hand in how that goes. Okay.

00:05:50
Speaker 2: But to go back to the question that I kind of interrupted my own question, if you're looking a few years out, ABS is obviously a prime example of how we could see the influence of Major League Baseball across college baseball. If the automated ball strike system goes across college baseball and becomes pervasive, it seems almost to make sense that with some adjustments, because the ABS system in major league baseball is a Hawkeye based system. And most of college baseball, you need it to be a track man based system. There's not a whole lot of Hawkeye in, in, in, in college baseball, but with those little tweaks, it doesn't make sense to try to reinvent the wheel here, right? That's one example, but are there others? Are there ways that if you looked at this three, four years down the road, that it's going to be more apparent that there is kind of a cooperation and influence of Major League Baseball and college baseball.

00:06:47
Speaker 3: There is, and I think that there are varying degrees of how obvious that will be.

00:06:51
Speaker 1: There are varying degrees of influence.

00:06:53
Speaker 3: I can tell you that in 2027, there will be influence that you may not feel you being the consumer of college baseball, but that teams will certainly feel. This year will be the first in which college baseball and softball teams will be utilizing MLB technology.

00:07:10
Speaker 1: For scoring.

00:07:11
Speaker 3: So when you go and look up a box score at the end of the day, and you want to know who did what in your favorite team's games, that box score will be compiled by MLB's stringer system. It was tested in 2026, and there is an agreement in place for all of college baseball and softball to start implementing that technology in 2027.

00:07:30
Speaker 2: You will notice that, by the way, as a fan, because again, it's not, it will be subtle, but you will notice probably likely differences in how statistics are displayed and all that. because there's very much, as someone who's on, and Jacob is even more than mine, but I can tell you right now, I can tell you right away almost, I know what kind of system has been used when I go to a team site and look at the stats, because again, there are all these slight subtle differences between the different ones. Major League Baseball would, again, there will be at least something that you might, you might not know that it's MLB, but you will know it's done a little differently than it was done in the past, I would say with that.

00:08:07
Speaker 3: And I would also just add that you want to talk about three, four years down the line from now. I think the hope with the implementation of this in order to make it felt more by the consumer is the goal is to have kind of a game day feel to college baseball games in terms of consuming them on the ESPN app, let's say, or on the MLB app, where if you're watching a regular season game and you can't actually watch the game, you can know pitch outcome, velocity, pitch type, outs, runners on base, and the likes, fielders, by going onto one app and using an interface that's very easy to understand and accurate in real time. I think the hope is that as this gets rolled out across college baseball, years down the line from now, there may be a similar interface that exists for the sport that allows people to consume it a little bit better. I would also say that if you're looking for like a real, potentially imminent big picture impact, look no further than the draft.

00:09:00
Speaker 1: We don't need to keep beating around that bush here.

00:09:02
Speaker 3: MLB, is in a major dispute, or what we believe will become a major dispute, about what the future of the draft is going to look like. And believe it or not, college baseball officials have some stake in the game on.

00:09:16
Speaker 1: A couple fronts in the dispute. One is purely the timing.

00:09:20
Speaker 3: College coaches, league officials, the vast majority of people you can talk to on that side of the sport would like an earlier draft than what is currently scheduled.

00:09:30
Speaker 1: They want something that's going to allow them to have.

00:09:33
Speaker 3: A little bit more flexibility on the portal window, be able to see who's going to enter the portal before the draft, see who's going to be drafted and signed, and then have a potentially short but at least existent window after the draft is over to continue to do some roster building. MLB, based on the conversations I was able to have, seems receptive to that. I think that that's as far as I would be willing to go with it at the moment, but it does seem like they want to listen. And then an earlier draft could be something that if there is a partnership that is really robust here could be something where college baseball has some influence and we see something change.

00:10:09
Speaker 2: I want to dive into that a little bit more right after this quick break. And we're back.

00:10:16
Speaker 1: Okay. Okay.

00:10:17
Speaker 2: Here's the challenge of this. I want to ask you further about that because obviously, as you said, MLB has at least indicated some receptivity, which is not the same as, oh, we're changing the date of the draft or anything like that, but at least a willingness to take on the feedback. The challenge here is there is a very small window of time that fits what I would describe as, as I understand, and please, you have more conversations than I do, the college coach's ideal window for when the draft is held, because one of the reasons that it is when it is being held as it is right now was ML being receptive to college baseball because the complaints before were, we don't want the draft to be taking place while our players are playing in the most important games of the season. There were examples because of different timing of rain delays or whatever, where literally Players were getting drafted while they were on the field. They want to avoid that, right? Which makes sense. That being said, obviously, there are at least ways to finesse it a little bit where you could say, we're going to hold the draft on these days, which are not ideal for TV, but in a lead up to the College World Series or something like that, where, yes, you may get drafted before you play in these games, but at the same time, you're not drafted while you're playing these games. There's also concerns with that, though, that major league baseball teams have had in the past that they don't think it's ideal to draft a pitcher and then watch him maybe go out and pitch on no day's rest or one day's rest to help secure a national championship. And then you've got maybe a little bit of damaged goods there. There's a lot of complex intermeshing concerns tied to the date where I would say that basically I feel like that there's almost like a one week window, maybe a sliver of time that would be like, that would make everyone semi happy, but then how do you make it a draft and event, you know, which Major League Baseball is doing right now, but is doing with under the logistical footprint of all-star weekend, which is very different than trying to do your own event separate from everything else. So how, how complex would it be to fix the draft date?

00:12:35
Speaker 3: That's the thing, and we make this clear in the reporting online as well. There is no clean solution to this right now, and that's just the truth. There has been conversations about the draft timing, even internally at league meetings when coaches gather in the offseason to have conversations about the state of things in the sport, in their league, nationally. And they talk about the draft with their league administrators. They talk about it amongst themselves. And it seems like widely the conclusion is frequently we would love for it to be earlier. How we get it to that point or what earlier actually means is really complicated. And so I think that when I say that MLB is receptive to the idea, that includes the fact that it's not easy to achieve. And I think that they may want to listen to it, but at the end of the day, actually getting there will be difficult.

00:13:26
Speaker 1: So I know that The.

00:13:29
Speaker 3: Current draft timing is a byproduct of college baseball's own doing. I think that there are coaches now that would argue that the sport has almost like over-evolved itself so many times since that change was made that it's no longer to the benefit of the sport and they wish that it hadn't happened that way. But we'll see. I think that right now college baseball is in a place where it is ready to adjust to I'm talking on a transfer portal, you know, calendar standpoint, end of year calendar standpoint, off season calendar standpoint. If there are adjustments made on the pro side, like college baseball will not change unless there's something to remold its calendar around, if you will.

00:14:08
Speaker 1: Okay.

00:14:08
Speaker 2: And I'll just end this point with this. So right now the 2027 college world series is scheduled to end on June 27th and all-star weekend, which is normally when the draft is out, we don't, you know, but it's, will be start July 10th. So July 10th, 11th, 12th, which basically means that there's only one weekend in between. Now, again, as you just said, it may be that coaches now decide, you know what, if it harms eight teams or six or four or whatever it is to hold it earlier, that's beneficial because of these other, you know, because obviously at the end of the day, there's a A ticking calendar doesn't sound right, but it is kind of that analogy. It's a ticking calendar that you have to have a draft. What they want is a draft signing date before the end of the transfer portal. Obviously, college NCAA has control over transfer portal timing, but there is a academic window timing component of this as well, which is there's a limit to how late you can push that because fall semesters begin. So there's not much... There's a lot of competing challenges here, are there not?

00:15:26
Speaker 1: You're muted. There we go. Sorry about that. There are, is the answer to your question, though.

00:15:33
Speaker 3: I think that that is kind of the crux of the draft conversation, which is that I think that there are a lot of details that still need to be figured out before either side can really proceed with confidence in what things.

00:15:45
Speaker 1: Should look like.

00:15:46
Speaker 3: But again, I will say that there is consensus on the college side, at least, that an earlier draft is a better and more convenient one. So do we know exactly what that looks like or how we get there yet? No. And I think that our reporting right now kind of leaves that open-ended because that's really what it is.

00:16:01
Speaker 1: Behind the scenes as well.

00:16:02
Speaker 3: But at the same time, the desired direction is pretty clear.

00:16:09
Speaker 2: So that leads to kind of a bigger picture question. which I'm going to ask you now, Jacob, to kind of take off the reporter hat, put on your analyst hat here, right? So this is going to be something where I'm asking you to go beyond just the reporting that you did, but kind of let's dive into this a little bit further. I thought one of the most interesting things in your story that spelled this out is that it spelled out, as you kind of just laid out, that you have the SEC, which is, I would say, a very cooperative relationship with Major League Baseball, You have other conferences that you mentioned, like the Sun Belt, the ACC, and others that are having these relationships. You have other conferences in your story that you don't really have a relationship with Major League Baseball right now. But then there's the bigger question, which is, okay, what I don't see in there, actually, there's reporting in the story that explains this further, but what you're not seeing in there is this tighter, more cohesive, cooperative relationship between the NCAA and Major League Baseball. Why is this being done kind of more at the conference level?

00:17:19
Speaker 1: Well, you kind of said it yourself, but I will reiterate the point.

00:17:24
Speaker 3: If there was one thing that stood out to me in my conversations, if I had to draw my biggest conclusion, it's that the NCAA is viewed rather widely by a lot of different parties and angles in all of these conversations as somewhat of an absentee figure in all of this the NCAA doesn't have as much of a stranglehold on what happens in college baseball as it might in college basketball for example it also doesn't necessarily have the same level of interest in college baseball as it does in college basketball and that's felt in its availability to the conferences and to MLB when it comes to being able to facilitate some of these changes. So I'll give you an example. We have seen over the last couple of years some evolution in the college game with the bases, like literally the bag at first base. It has gone from the traditional.

00:18:20
Speaker 1: Old school small single bag to the old school small single bag doubled up. You've got the double first base.

00:18:27
Speaker 3: And now going into 2027, there is belief, and it's certainly going into 2028, that not only will we be transitioning to the pizza box bags, but we will see the double single pizza box bag at first base. So there are weird changes going on that may be hard to appreciate, but that was a change that was spearheaded and a lot of support gathered behind the scenes by the SEC. They burdened a lot of the workload when it came to convincing mid-major leagues, leagues that its teams were going to be playing, hey, We think that this is a change that's going to come to the NCAA at large. We would encourage you to opt into the experimental rule at the time and let's garner some real momentum and support for this so we can try and advance it in the college game. Let's just get this to happen sooner. And what happened? The double bag gets implemented. Teams are using it all over the place. There were things that were a little bit messy at first. And I think there were a lot of people behind the scenes that would admit that when it comes to video review, implementation of some of the rules. We've written about this at Baseball America. But by and large, this was rolled out and successful because of the SEC.

00:19:42
Speaker 1: ABS. Is that an NCAA initiative or an SEC initiative? Purely the SEC.

00:19:47
Speaker 3: And a byproduct to tie into what we're talking about today. of a relationship with MLB. The NCAA has had a conversation with Major League Baseball. How do we implement this? What are the mistakes that we need to try and avoid? Can you send personnel familiar with this operating system to help us run it smoothly? That was not something that was asked of the NCAA. And if anything, The SEC has also run point a little bit on how it's going to roll out further. The initial step that was taken with regard to ABS was to implement it for whoever had the capability technologically to do it. If you had TrackMan and the desire, you were within your right to utilize ABS in any home game in 2027. That was the initial proposal put forward. The SEC had made it abundantly clear to the NCAA that it was not even prepared to be able to implement ABS as successfully as it made it look. It was a very difficult operation. You can read about that again at Baseball America. This is all to say, the NCAA is not necessarily the one that is spearheading these initiatives. It is not the one that is leading the charge in the conversations about what makes sense for college baseball and what doesn't. And so, to answer your question, I know this was a a long-winded answer, but MLB is invested in having relationships with conferences because it knows that if it wants to be able to advance certain things, if it wants to be able to introduce certain technologies, its access point right now is through conferences that are invested in college baseball. It's why we see them having success with the SEC. It's why the Sun Belt has become a very viable partner for MLB because the Sun Belt really cares about baseball. And the ACC, of course, has been involved in similar conversations as well. So, you know, right now, I don't know that the NCAA has positioned itself to be an adequate partner for MLB and to, you know, kind of advance college baseball at the speed that maybe it's ready for it.

00:21:50
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll follow up with the question then. Why is that?

00:21:56
Speaker 1: Well, I think that it comes down to what matters to the NCAA. It's as simple as that.

00:22:00
Speaker 3: College baseball, as much as we love it, college baseball is not a moneymaker for the NCAA.

00:22:07
Speaker 1: It's very rarely a.

00:22:08
Speaker 3: Moneymaker for individual universities. The vast majority of schools will lose money on their college baseball programs. The NCAA... given its current position. And, you know, I don't need to explain that to people who are already listening to the show. The NCAA's position right now does not really allow for it to spend time focused on things that it doesn't care about per se. And college baseball, not to say that it doesn't care about college baseball, because, you know, we see at the college world series, the NCAA sends out, you know, a couple of officials and they address the media the day before the college world series begins. And every year I find at least those people say a lot of the right things and, we hear a lot about the good that's happening around college baseball, but at the end of the day, the.

00:22:53
Speaker 1: NCAA is spending a.

00:22:54
Speaker 3: Lot of its resources and time making sure that things like college football and college basketball, men's basketball specifically, are keeping its head above water. And does college baseball demand the same level of life-saving? No, it purely does not. And so my guess is that the NCAA does not have as much stake in it. I don't know that there are enough dedicated people to college baseball, specifically full-time to be able to even have the manpower to be kind of the active partner that I think some of the conferences and MLB are looking for. And I know that a lot of these leagues are positioning themselves better when it comes to the sport than the NCAA is perhaps. And so for MLB to be involved, again, I think it's just a matter of ease that the conferences require you to pry less than.

00:23:45
Speaker 1: To be able to kind of have relationships.

00:23:47
Speaker 3: And I can also say this, there are conferences that don't have a relationship with MLB right now that are very eager to start one and see how they can have a healthy relationship. I can tell you based on, put my reporter hat back on, based on the conversations I was having, there was not a lot of evidence that the NCAA is kind of busting the door down to have some well-formed relationship with MLB. I think that there are things like the scoring system that we talked about that are agreed upon and being advanced because those are easy and there are conferences that have fought for them. But I don't know that there is an extra effort necessarily being made behind the scenes to strengthen those bonds or go beyond these very low-hanging fruit, easily accessible type things that MLB is doing all the work to provide.

00:24:32
Speaker 2: So the follow-up question, the second question with that is, does MLB, what sounds like also is where it currently stands, is there anything that cannot be done because of what could really be described almost as an end around, right? Like it's not, and I don't mean like they're stiff arming the NCAA, but seeing that they're getting, MLB seems like it's getting much more traction by working with conferences. Conferences see that they can work directly with major league baseball and things. Are there things though that really there are limits to that? Are there limits to this because, there are certain things that the only the NCAA can do.

00:25:14
Speaker 1: Of course, there are limits to this.

00:25:15
Speaker 3: But at the same time, I think that it needs to be said that there is no, it's quite the opposite of a stiff arm in this situation, the way a lot of people see it. If the NCAA wanted to get involved, there are a number of people who have spoken to Baseball America on the condition of anonymity who would tell you that that would be more than welcome. They would love to see a more active NCAA. And I don't think that anybody would be opposed to that. So let's set that stage first. Like, if NCAA wanted to be involved, there's room at the table. I think that there are things that maybe you need full NCAA approval rules-wise to implement. But quite frankly, the answer to your question is no. Like, we've seen over the last couple of years the SEC take charge of in making changes to how college baseball is played within its own conference, and whether the change is immediate or a season later or whatever it may be across the rest of the landscape, the.

00:26:15
Speaker 1: Rest of the country has followed.

00:26:16
Speaker 3: We've written at Baseball America a number of times that the reason that SEC coaches meetings and the conversations that the SEC is having in college baseball are so important is because the next time that college baseball doesn't follow a trend that was started by the SEC will be the first.

00:26:33
Speaker 1: So I think that In theory, there.

00:26:39
Speaker 3: Should be limitations if you aren't working with the governing body of college baseball, being the NCAA. But in practice, we've seen a lot of college baseball's most golden era growth, if you will, occur over the last couple of years when it is well documented that there is virtually no zero relationship between MLB.

00:26:58
Speaker 1: And the NCAA.

00:26:59
Speaker 3: And for that matter, I think it's kind of been a lousy partnership, we'll put it that way, between some of the conferences and the NCAA, to put.

00:27:07
Speaker 1: My analyst hat back on.

00:27:08
Speaker 3: I would infer that there are conferences wishing that they had better relationships with their own governing body as they try and advance some of their own initiatives.

00:27:18
Speaker 1: Okay.

00:27:20
Speaker 2: Tell me if I'm wrong here. This is my analysis, but just from 20 plus years at BA, right? There is a logistical calendar that we see both at the NCAA level and I would say at some of the conference level, right?

00:27:39
Speaker 1: So when you.

00:27:39
Speaker 2: Say the Sun Belt, and again, let's take the SEC out of it, some of the conferences having more significant relationships with Major League Baseball. There's a reality that we've seen with the NCAA for years, I would say, that the college baseball season may begin in February, practices may begin in January, but for the NCAA on a practical basis, it's like, let's get through the things that are most important to us, which is we have this massive college basketball, pair of college basketball tournaments going on in March. And once that's, once the deck's clear of that, which is an all hands on deck production effectively, we will then move into spring sports like baseball and other spring sports as well. And that used to work. That used to fit no problem at all in a sport that was much smaller, much less high profile. And I would say at the conference level, you have conferences who, I would just put it again, they are limited in their resources. They're limited in their manpower. the number of people who they have working on this. And so you have someone who's in charge of baseball, but has winter sport and fall sport responsibilities as well. And so if it's like major league baseball's on the phone, has a question about working with us on baseball and it's football season or it's basketball season, you have conferences where I think logistically, it's just like, I don't have time to deal with that right now. And they're not, They're like, baseball will come, but I've got to get through these things I'm overworked on right now.

00:29:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an entirely accurate statement. There are major limitations. I said this a second ago. There are major limitations that are created by how things operate within. college sports. You just laid it out perfectly. That is exactly the system. And I think that when people are spread thin and there are a lot bigger fish to fry in conferences and.

00:29:52
Speaker 1: Within NCAA, it becomes difficult.

00:29:56
Speaker 3: To manage the Things that are of less importance than the college footballs and the college basketballs of the world.

00:30:06
Speaker 2: Is that going to change or is that probably just a reality?

00:30:09
Speaker 3: That's a reality, which is why this is so important. That is probably the perfect bow to put on this. The importance of MLB's relationship with college baseball is twofold. One, I think that there is hope. Again, this is not reporting. This is my own analysis. This is my opinion. I think that there is hope on the MLB side that a relationship with college baseball will prove beneficial when it comes to sitting down at the negotiating table this offseason and putting together a proposal specifically as it relates to the draft that it is happy with. I think that it hopes that college baseball having some level of interest in getting more good players to campus, in getting more resources brought to it, and having a little bit of a better and more sturdy partner behind it in advancing its initiatives are going to be things that the league will bring to the bargaining table and go, look, the largest source of our talent, our player pool, and the people who are in charge of it want the sport to look this way. They're on our side. So here are the things that we think are best. I think in theory, that's one really important part of this relationship. The other is what you just touched on. I don't ever see, no matter what happens with the direction of college sports, a world in which college sports, obviously being an entity that stays together and doesn't disband and fracture into a million pieces. I don't see a world in which the NCAA prioritizes baseball over men's basketball and football. It just doesn't generate the same kind of money, even on college baseball's relatively meteoric trajectory, which we've seen year after year, for the last couple of years, it will not sniff the monetary value of either college football or college basketball. That's all you need to say. And so with that being the case, I don't see why anybody who is heavily invested and involved in college baseball would operate these days with any amount of confidence that the landscape is going to change with regard to their relationship with the NCAA. So if MLB is going to be a great partner in helping to advance the game, and that's the partner that the conferences need, I think that that becomes a very long-term viable play for both parties. So to answer your question, no, I don't see that changing. And it is precisely why I think that this is important.

00:32:40
Speaker 2: So you say you don't see that changing. I do want to kind of wrap this up by kind of, asking another big picture question, which as you've noted, as we've talked about on this podcast before, the SEC, because of its willingness to kind of take the lead and having both the resources and the success, and I don't mean just on the field, but I mean like as far as if you are another college baseball conference and you're saying, how should we want college baseball to be a big deal for us? You have to look at the SEC and say they're doing it right. Because from a revenue perspective compared to most else, they're doing it right. They're drawing more fans. They have more, they're deriving more revenue from their college baseball programs as well. But is there potentially, as we've kind of, I've raised this question before, is there a potential to harms that come from that as well, which is we, in a sport that what you just laid out is kind of, being, which you could say about many college sports, but is being driven more from not the front. If you think of the NCAA as the bus driver, right? It's being driven more kind of ground roots.

00:34:02
Speaker 1: It's grassroots.

00:34:03
Speaker 2: It's being driven by the conferences now more than the governing body. Are there potential pitfalls to that? Especially, let's just say, if you are a smaller conference, less resourced than, say, like the SEC.

00:34:19
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that logically speaking, the answer would be yes, there are pitfalls to that. However, I would point out my pushback would be, haven't we already seen that? Like what further damage would be my retort question back to you, if you will. What have we not yet seen that you would be afraid of as a byproduct of this relationship? Because my argument would be that it's already been a while. since the NCAA had the level of interest necessary in college baseball to do some of the things that we're talking about. And even if it wasn't MLB necessarily, that was kind of running hand in hand with some of the conferences. I do think that the conferences now for a long time have had to kind of run the show here and make sure that the sport has been trending in the right direction. So would any further lack of influence and relationship with the NCAA, with the governing body really be to the sports detriment or would we just continue living the reality we've seen now for several years?

00:35:23
Speaker 1: I personally think the latter.

00:35:26
Speaker 2: I mean, that's what we'll have to see, you know, but it is a significant development going on in college baseball. Do check out the story over at baseballamerica.com for much more on this and obviously Jacob, and we will continue to cover this going forward. That's the Baseball America College Podcast for this week. For Jacob, I'm JJ.

00:35:47
Speaker 1: So long, everybody.