Three Baseball Conferences Discussing Regional Scheduling Alliance (Big East, A10 & CAA) | The Boneyard

Three Baseball Conferences Discussing Regional Scheduling Alliance (Big East, A10 & CAA)

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>>College baseball coaches already have a wealth of experience dealing with roster management issues. Now, some coaches and administrators inside the Colonial Athletic Association, Big East Conference and Atlantic 10 Conference are looking to put together a temporary and regional scheduling alliance in all secondary sports to help save money in 2021.

Many programs around the country are investigating ways they can make life easier for their administrators from a budgetary standpoint, hence the idea of a regional scheduling alliance was created by Connecticut head coach Jim Penders. With the creation of this alliance, it would allow programs in similar regional proximities from the A-10, CAA and Big East to compete without placing a heavy burden on the programs from a financial standpoint.

“We’re working on trying to find a regional solution. It makes a lot of sense in the short term and my hope is that it would take a lot of financial burden away from the schools,” Penders said about the plan. “I first brought it up on a conference call with Big East coaches two weeks ago and I asked if anyone would be dead set against this. No one was. Essentially, we left the meeting looking to explore which other conferences would be willing to navigate this with us.”<<
 

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The A10 is fairly weak in college baseball, but Rhode Island was strong last year (8-5 with wins over Arizona and Maryland) and Davidson is usually good.

The CAA is stronger, with solid programs like Northeastern, UNC Wilmington, and College of Charleston (lol hi again). Throw in Elon and W&M programs that have been improving and we would have some pretty good series on our hands.
 
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>>The idea from Penders’ standpoint was to find some leagues of similar stature who have large geographic footprints. The A-10 and CAA came to mind, with the A-10 having teams in the Midwest, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. The CAA has teams ranging from Northeastern in Boston to College of Charleston. In other words, plane flights, i.e., expensive trips, are the norm for some programs in those leagues.

Penders spoke with several coaches from those leagues, including Rhode Island’s Raphael Cerrato, Northeastern’s Mike Glavine, St. John’s Mike Hampton, Seton Hall’s Rob Sheppard and Fordham’s Kevin Leighton. All those coaches, he said, were on board with the general framework of the alliance.

What would the framework for this scheduling alliance look like for baseball, and potentially, other spring sports?

Though the alliance discussions are still very much in the early stages, the general idea is that the scheduling would be done with a pod approach.

For instance, the Colonial Athletic Association would not have conference play like usual. Instead, a program like College of Charleston would only play teams in its region (South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia) during the usual conference portion of the schedule. No regular season conference champion would be awarded in any of the three leagues and conference tournaments would be played. However, the tournament seedings would be based on RPIs.

No official pods have been put together throughout the discussion phase of this proposal, but programs like Connecticut ideally would be paired with Hofstra, Seton Hall, St. John’s, Massachusetts, Northeastern and Rhode Island, among others. The same kind of arrangement would be assembled for programs from these leagues in the Mid-Atlantic region, while the South Carolina-North Carolina and Virginia grouping could include Charleston, UNC Wilmington, Elon, George Mason, Davidson, Virginia Commonwealth, James Madison, William & Mary and Towson.<<
 
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>>Penders: “At the end of the day, we’re all trying to make sure we keep as many kids in uniform on Opening Day 2021 as we had on Opening Day in 2020,” he continued, “We owe it to the game and the people who play it. I think anything has a good chance of happening right now. It has a chance, but everyone has to be on board. This is an alliance that would not only apply to baseball for one year, but also other secondary sports.”<<
 
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The A10 is fairly weak in college baseball, but Rhode Island was strong last year (8-5 with wins over Arizona and Maryland) and Davidson is usually good.

The CAA is stronger, with solid programs like Northeastern, UNC Wilmington, and College of Charleston (lol hi again). Throw in Elon and W&M programs that have been improving and we would have some pretty good series on our hands.

Yes, the A10 is hardly a strong baseball conference. However, Rhode Island usually has a pretty good baseball program year in and year out, especially for a northeastern school. They are good enough that UConn baseball has had URI on the schedule twice a season for a number of years now. URI is normally not an RPI killer on your schedule, like some teams in the northeast are.
 

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No doubt - we even scrimmaged them in the fall a couple of times. Vance has put in some work there!
 
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If they're talking about, for one year, exchanging weekend series with Creighton and Marquette for series with Northeaster and Rhodey, as an emergency budgeting measure, fine. But over even the intermediate term, it's hard to imagine that more games against New England opponents is going to be good for our computer rankings or developments. And if they're talking about some of these series IN SUBSTITUTION for the weekend trips south or west that precede the conference season, then we're screwed from a quality of competition perspective.
 
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If they're talking about, for one year, exchanging weekend series with Creighton and Marquette for series with Northeaster and Rhodey, as an emergency budgeting measure, fine. But over even the intermediate term, it's hard to imagine that more games against New England opponents is going to be good for our computer rankings or developments. And if they're talking about some of these series IN SUBSTITUTION for the weekend trips south or west that precede the conference season, then we're screwed from a quality of competition perspective.

From within the article (I didn't post the whole article 'cuz it was long and $$ article):

>>“We’re looking at this from a standpoint of conferences with similar constraints and geographical hallmarks,” one Colonial head coach said. “This would only be a one-time deal and would help eliminate air travel and expensive, long trips. It would help promote the idea that we’re trying to improve student-athlete safety.

“This would be a smart solution as a one-year deal until everyone gets back to normal,” the coach added. “This is going to be a collaborative effort amongst mid-major programs to minimize risk and expenditures from a travel standpoint. This will allow athletic departments to trim their budgets without teams having to cancel games to do it. This approach would give teams a full 56-game schedule without too much of a financial burden. I get the feeling from what I know that a lot of northern programs in these leagues really want this to happen. We’re on board, but I think those programs really want this to come to fruition.”<<
 
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From within the article (I didn't post the whole article 'cuz it was long and $$ article):

>>“We’re looking at this from a standpoint of conferences with similar constraints and geographical hallmarks,” one Colonial head coach said. “This would only be a one-time deal and would help eliminate air travel and expensive, long trips. It would help promote the idea that we’re trying to improve student-athlete safety.

“This would be a smart solution as a one-year deal until everyone gets back to normal,” the coach added. “This is going to be a collaborative effort amongst mid-major programs to minimize risk and expenditures from a travel standpoint. This will allow athletic departments to trim their budgets without teams having to cancel games to do it. This approach would give teams a full 56-game schedule without too much of a financial burden. I get the feeling from what I know that a lot of northern programs in these leagues really want this to happen. We’re on board, but I think those programs really want this to come to fruition.”<<

It won't be the end of the world for one season, but I don't like a plan that, as your quote shows, is being looked at for "mid major" programs. Our baseball program is not a mid-major.
 
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I can't imagine there is going to be a lot of normalcy during the 2020-2021 season for any college sport at any school. Coach Penders comes across as a UConn team player, and I think he knows he and others are going to have take one for the team next season. Hopefully this one year plan will remain just a one year plan, and that UConn baseball can resume rattling the cages of the top baseball programs in the country soon enough.
 
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It seems as though there would be a lot of games canceled due to weather in Feb. and Mar. if we were playing only in the north east. Most of our games during that time are much further south where the weather is warmer and drier.
 
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The article does raise one key issue for Northeast college baseball - teams basically have to travel down south to get games in March and April. I wonder if they can collaborate there, too? Maybe have a dozen or so programs 'camp' in say the Tampa area and share some of the big baseball complex there. The intial travel costs will be high; but, if they don't have to travel all over the southeast, they save money.
 
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The article does raise one key issue for Northeast college baseball - teams basically have to travel down south to get games in March and April. I wonder if they can collaborate there, too? Maybe have a dozen or so programs 'camp' in say the Tampa area and share some of the big baseball complex there. The initial travel costs will be high; but, if they don't have to travel all over the southeast, they save money.

Sounds good in theory but you have to remember these kids are students first. So maybe if they couple it with the spring break trip you could extend it to two weeks but you can only miss so many days of class and only play so many games before arms burn out.

I honestly think the NCAA needs to allow some teams to play maybe up to 10 games in the fall to count towards the spring. Otherwise you are going to see schedule discrepancies back to the days before the mandatory start date where some schools ended in the low 40's while others approached 60.
 
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May need to dust off the Regional Scheduling Alliance plans. 2021 lining up to be a schedule challenge across the board:



Kendall Rogers @KendallRogers 2m
Two things to add: 1) Coaches are expected to add some #BigTen teams as ‘non-conference games” to get as close to 56 games as possible. 2) Even had the B1G kept NC games, teams would’ve been required to bus to everything. Would’ve been a mess.

Kendall Rogers @KendallRogers 3m
We could find out about more Power Five conferences in the next week or so. The #Big12 had a meeting with higher ups earlier this week, and will meet again next week to discuss spring schedule plans. The #SEC plans to wait as long as possible, hoping for a regular, 56-game sked.
 

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