During Friday's edition of TexAgs Radio, Scott Clendenin and D1Baseball.com's Kendall Rogers joined to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on college baseball and whether or not we will see the 2020 season continue.
Key notes from Kendall Rogers interview
- My overall and initial reaction: the team I hate most is the coronavirus.
- As someone who works and covers college athletics, the feeling I have is like 9/11. It's surreal. At this point, it's like what isn't going to get canceled?
- The big point for me yesterday was the NCAA out-of-nowhere deciding to cancel the College World Series, an event that takes place months from now. All of the experts seem the think that when it warms up, we're going to be fine. The lead story is March Madness. It was a tough day for college athletics. To cancel an event that happens in June is just silly to me.
- At the end of the day, the baseball tournament makes the NCAA well over a million dollars in revenue. Money is part of it. But now there are so many other issues that come of this. What happens with Title IX if you keep the baseball tournament but cancel other events? I think they just went to just canceling everything because of that.
- I know as a fact that the SEC and Big 12 want to continue to play baseball when all of this is gone. There are a lot of leagues that are carrying on with business as usual, just without the games. Teams will continue to practice.
- It's sad. I'm not saying college baseball is more important than a world health emergency, but these players and coaches have spent so much time in the summer and fall recruiting and working for this season, and now it's gone.
- Think of all of these SEC teams will big-time draft prospects, like Asa Lacy, that are going to get drafted this summer and never come back.
- I hope that we come out of all of this and we can play again. I do know that the City of Omaha has an interest in having a mini-College World Series this summer that is not sanctioned by the NCAA.
- I think its about a 30-35 percent chance that we play again this summer. I think it's a decent chance. It's very fluid, but honestly, 24 hours ago, I would've said it was 70 percent that we'd play the College World Series. It is a mess.
- A lot of time goes into coaches and players putting these rosters together with the roster and scholarship cap. The NCAA is going to have to get rid of the roster and scholarship cap this coming season, or else that's lawsuit central.
- In a perfect world, you still have conference tournaments and a min-College World Series. You're not going to wait two weeks because you won't have regionals the weeks before. So you could find a way to pick eight teams for that mini-tournament based on the RPI formula and other things. People want to crown a champion. It might not have the NCAA logo on it, but they're going to want to.
- If college baseball can go around the NCAA and pull a national championship together, that would be huge and would show that they don't need the NCAA. If all of this falls the way it could, this could be the beginning of the end for the NCAA.
- Bottom line, teams are still practicing, and teams want to play. I hope we get this whole thing figured out, and we see guys like Asa Lacy back on the mound again. It would be disappointing if we didn't.
