Our Opinion

Injustice on the baseball diamond

FRESNO STATE HEAD coach Mike Batesole said it best.

“Baseball, nationally, has two major issues it has to adjust,” Batesole said.

Because the Bulldog baseball team has failed to meet the NCAA minimum Academic Progress Report standard, the scholarship allotment for the team has decreased by 1.17 scholarships.

The Bulldogs received a score of 864, despite a team-average GPA of 2.8 and at least 20 Torch of Excellence academic award winners every year, Batesole said.

The Torch of Excellence is an award given to athletes who excel on the field and in the classroom.

It is a shame the Fresno State baseball team is forced to forfeit any amount of scholarships, considering the academic feats they have accomplished under Batesole.

The NCAA is wrong for penalizing not just Fresno State but any team that outperforms the standards given, but for reasons beyond their control, such as transfers, are negatively affected in the APR score.

Past transfers, in addition to drafted athletes, greatly affect the outcome of a collegiate program’s APR score. Each player in the program can earn up to four points a year and two per semester.

Players on the team and eligible in the fall semester would earn two APR points for that semester. The same player could be on the team and ineligible for the spring semester, thus earning him three out of a possible four APR points.

Transfers from the baseball program have typically earned a two out of four, or an APR score of 500.

Under current NCAA rules, baseball is the only sport that allows transfers from a school to play immediately for another Division-1 school, making a transfer a much more likely occurrence in Batesole’s program.

Every member of Batesole’s baseball team has outperformed expectations put on them, but NCAA rules regarding transfers and underclassmen draft picks have hindered the baseball team’s overall score and penalizes the team for reasons out of its control.

“The draft issue is killing teams that are having good recruiting classes,” Batesole said.

An immediate change to a nonsensical rule, such as the one under the current APR standards, must be made. The current standards are just unfair.

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