Giving players another year opens up another can of worms

Sometimes in life, there just isn’t a perfect answer. Solving one problem can possibly open up a plethora of others.

That’s the difficulty the NCAA Division I Council faces today as it’ll vote on student-athlete eligibility relief. That’s a fancy way of saying that a bunch of people are going to vote to see if baseball players, softball players and all spring athletes should be given one more year of collegiate eligibility since their seasons were all just wrecked and canceled by the ongoing novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

On the surface, the decision seems simple enough. Just give every spring athlete an extra year. That’s the side of the equation I happen to fall on. It’s also the side Mississippi State head baseball coach Chris Lemonis falls on, at least as pertains to his baseball players. It’s baseball I mainly want to focus on here as today’s decision will have long-reaching impacts.

It appears to make a ton of sense to just let seniors like MSU pitcher Riley Self come back in 2021 if they want to. Such players couldn’t help their seasons weren’t even a month long before the country started shutting down and self-isolating. Freshmen like catcher Logan Tanner and pitcher Landon Sims shouldn’t lose a year of eligibility because of unforeseen circumstances either.

Maybe the class that most needs an extra year of eligibility in baseball is the juniors. Major League Baseball has shortened its upcoming draft. That means that many juniors who might have previously been drafted now won’t be. If they can come back to school next year still as juniors, that allows them to go into next year’s MLB Draft with some leverage to possibly get a higher signing bonus. Alternatively, if those players enter the draft as a senior, they’d have no leverage at all as their collegiate eligibility would have expired, forcing them to pretty much take whatever they were given.

If you’ll remember, MSU’S Jake Mangum got just a $20,000 signing bonus from the Mets last year following his senior year. After Mangum’s junior year, he turned down six-figure offers to return to school. I don’t think Mangum regrets his decision at all, but he did lose out on some money up front because after his senior year, he had zero leverage.

All of this is to say, again, I think players should be given back a year of eligibility.

That doesn’t mean that doing so won’t open up other cans of worms though. Lemonis told me last week when we chatted that he knew nothing that gets decided by today’s vote would be perfect. He’s right.

Baseball has a 35-man roster limit. Of the 35 players, 27 of those can be on scholarship as teams divide up 11.7 scholarships amongst those guys.

What if all seniors get to stay seniors and come back? Throw in all the talented freshmen coming in. There should very well be even more of those than usual since the MLB Draft will be significantly shorter.

Suddenly, you’re in a situation where allowing another year of eligibility means roster limits must be changed. Scholarship limits must be changed. That’s not to even mention that, if all that happens, how do coaches juggle playing time and keeping every member of their jampacked rosters happy?

I mean there are solutions. Just like granting the extra year of eligibility seems like the right thing to do, I don’t guess it’d be all that hard to relax other rules, but if you’re increasing roster sizes and putting more guys on scholarship, that’s adding more money to athletic budgets – much more money. It’s also coming at a time where money is being lost.

For instance, the NCAA announced on Thursday that since the men’s tournament was canceled, it slashed its distribution of the event’s revenue by about $375 million, which is a cut of nearly two-thirds. That means $225 million will be distributed to 32 different conferences instead of the originally-budgeted $600 million.

Now I’m not sure how that directly impacts Mississippi State, but I do know this. Canceling games and events lowers money brought in. What if there is no 2020 football season? I know that’s putting the cart before the horse. Much can happen before the fall, but if there is no football come September, that’s quite a bit of money that MSU is losing out on. Can these schools take the chance to add money to their budgets at a time they are unsure if their biggest money-maker – football – will even happen?

I just don’t know. quite a bit to consider.

One thing is for sure though. We’re supposed to know today whether or not spring-sport athletes can get back the year they lost. I hope, for their sakes, they do, but I also recognize that if they do, it creates a bunch of new challenges as well.

It’s