I try to write about baseball every 10 years or so no matter what is going on.

My least favorite thing about the NCAA Tournament is the annual "ain't fair that the season starts so early" whine about northern teams being disadvantaged. My numbers seem to show moving the dates won't fix the problem much because it starts before kids get college.

http://www.scout.com/college/arkansas-st...all-better

Oh and I know North Carolina got left out (for reasons stated in the piece) North Carolina had 30 MLB players in 2015 and a population of 9,943,964 so you can reverse engineer that.

Makes sense. I'm not sure about the north but in the south competitive youth baseball / softball is pretty much a year-round thing.

(05-31-2016 03:55 PM)rokamortis Wrote:  Makes sense. I'm not sure about the north but in the south competitive youth baseball / softball is pretty much a year-round thing.

Exactly. My son played late Feb to June and then traveling team July-August and if he wanted to (usually didn't) fall baseball Sept-Oct or first week or so of November.

My cousin's kids in Boca Raton, started in January and could play several different leagues/teams until mid-December.

Can't imagine they do that much in Michigan.

The RPI W-L adjustment was put in place to help the northern teams. If they want to talk inequities please direct them to our board. :)

(05-31-2016 04:08 PM)SkullyMaroo Wrote:  The RPI W-L adjustment was put in place to help the northern teams. If they want to talk inequities please direct them to our board. :)

Also to make sure southern teams with a propensity to have 47 out of 56 games played at home get their a** on the road.

(05-31-2016 04:34 PM)CajunAmos Wrote:  

(05-31-2016 04:08 PM)SkullyMaroo Wrote:  The RPI W-L adjustment was put in place to help the northern teams. If they want to talk inequities please direct them to our board. :)

Also to make sure southern teams with a propensity to have 47 out of 56 games played at home get their a** on the road.

We need this to happen in basketball. It would help us so much.

(05-31-2016 04:36 PM)SkullyMaroo Wrote:  

(05-31-2016 04:34 PM)CajunAmos Wrote:  

(05-31-2016 04:08 PM)SkullyMaroo Wrote:  The RPI W-L adjustment was put in place to help the northern teams. If they want to talk inequities please direct them to our board. :)

Also to make sure southern teams with a propensity to have 47 out of 56 games played at home get their a** on the road.

We need this to happen in basketball. It would help us so much.

I would make the argument it also needs to happen in softball, although with a smaller differential than the 0.7/1.3 used for baseball.

(05-31-2016 04:34 PM)CajunAmos Wrote:  

(05-31-2016 04:08 PM)SkullyMaroo Wrote:  The RPI W-L adjustment was put in place to help the northern teams. If they want to talk inequities please direct them to our board. :)

Also to make sure southern teams with a propensity to have 47 out of 56 games played at home get their a** on the road.

I would bet you can attribute UTs minor downfall to having to play more road games. Until they put that in place they only came to San Marcos as a "favor to Ty" to open the new ballpark in 2009. Otherwise, all games were in Austin. They don't get as much "home cooking" when they have to go on that road. You know, like the AD (or some other high roller) has a son in law on the umpiring crew,

There's definitely more sports participation in Southern states. I also think socioeconomic stats (SES) is a factor in sports participation. The Bible-Black-Cotton Belt is the poorest part of the US ('Why' is another story) and sports participation is both inexpensive recreation and opportunity to escape poverty through college. If you go back to the 50's and 60's, you'll see more Northern participation from 1st or 2nd generation immigrants from Italy, Poland, Ireland, and other war-torn European countries. Weather is certainly a factor, but it's a more complex issue. Affluent kids are playing Lacrosse, Golf, Tennis, etc.

(06-01-2016 06:33 AM)Eagles Cliff Wrote:  There's definitely more sports participation in Southern states. I also think socioeconomic stats (SES) is a factor in sports participation. The Bible-Black-Cotton Belt is the poorest part of the US ('Why' is another story) and sports participation is both inexpensive recreation and opportunity to escape poverty through college. If you go back to the 50's and 60's, you'll see more Northern participation from 1st or 2nd generation immigrants from Italy, Poland, Ireland, and other war-torn European countries. Weather is certainly a factor, but it's a more complex issue. Affluent kids are playing Lacrosse, Golf, Tennis, etc.

well certainly kids in the south spend more time outdoors and IMHO tend to go in for the less yuppified sports. where I live they start early with t-ball and very early on the ones that can, start getting trainers and playing in select leagues. my own experience here in the dfw area is that if your kid waits to start playing baseball till he is 8 like in the old days, he will be behind already and will have a hard time getting up to speed unless he is just going to be a rec player. same thing with girls volleyball and softball.

(06-01-2016 06:33 AM)Eagles Cliff Wrote:  There's definitely more sports participation in Southern states. I also think socioeconomic stats (SES) is a factor in sports participation. The Bible-Black-Cotton Belt is the poorest part of the US ('Why' is another story) and sports participation is both inexpensive recreation and opportunity to escape poverty through college. If you go back to the 50's and 60's, you'll see more Northern participation from 1st or 2nd generation immigrants from Italy, Poland, Ireland, and other war-torn European countries. Weather is certainly a factor, but it's a more complex issue. Affluent kids are playing Lacrosse, Golf, Tennis, etc.

Among the places with the highest population density I see Boston, NYC, Philadelphia and Chicago.

High population density = high land prices = little incentive to set aside land for youth baseball, football, and soccer. Unsurprisingly these happen to be strong basketball cities, takes up less land if outside and high school or youth courts can be on the first floor or 20th floor (right GaSt?) of a building.