Catching up with some of the stories from the week I’ve been away.

Uniform Start Date gets nixed after only one season.  The NCAA voted today to undo the scheduling mess of the Uniform Start Date just imposed this year.  The rule was created to give Northern schools like Michigan a more level playing field with Southern schools.  Programs like Michigan have to travel to Florida or Arizona in the early weeks of seasons which can cost a school a pretty penny.  The start date did cause problems however with scheduling, as many schools are playing multiple mid week games, throwing some RPIs into tailspins, detracting from study time for student athletes, and -GASP!- forcing some major programs to play more road games in the midweek.  The Southern schools don’t like it at all.  Welcome to our world.

In an article by Kendall Rogers at Yahoo! Sports, Coach Maloney was the vocal opposition to the change:

“It will enhance the financial burden that we already to go through, because now we have to add another week to the schedule, likely on the road,” Maloney said. “Adding the week to the start of the season just shoots down the original intent of the uniform start date.”

So it looks like next year its back to an extra weekend series in Florida playing weak competition while teams like North Carolina who has already played 30 home games this season will get another 2-3 more home games.  There’s no reason for not adding the week to the end of the season.  Well, there is one reason, but I seriously doubt the NCAA is worried about sharing Omaha with USA Swim for a week.

Chris Fetter to the Pitcher Of The Year Watchlist.  The College Baseball Foundation released their preliminary watch list for Pitcher of the Year and Chris Fetter is Michigan’s man.  He’s one of 4 BigTen pitchers to make the list.  Chris has virtually no shot at winning the award.  Stephen Strasburg of San Diego is “god.”  There was rumor that he’s already negotiating with the Nationals for a 6 year $50million contract.  So while its nice to be on the list, its a slim slim slim chance that Fetter takes the hardware.

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