(05-31-2020 08:38 AM)SkullyMaroo Wrote: (05-30-2020 11:36 PM)AllTideUp Wrote: (05-28-2020 02:26 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote: Maybe we won't see the season pushed back an entire month, but pushing it back by, say, 2 weeks so that the season starts after March 1st could reap a lot of the weather-related benefits nationally without having to push the back end of the calendar (such as the College World Series) too far into June/July.
Two weeks is better than nothing, but I would really prefer college basketball to be wrapping up when baseball starts.
Of course, that doesn't really happen until the first week in April so that's probably not tenable.
Just my way of thinking, but I think another option would be to create more preseason tournaments in warmer climates. A lot of people are heading to the beach in March anyway and so I think some teams could help themselves by forgoing home games altogether around that time of year.
Instead of spending time bouncing through road sites, we really should have hotspots in warmer states where teams from all over the country can gather and get several games out of the way before the meat of the schedule. Would probably save everyone on travel costs if nothing else and be an interesting mix of match-ups. I think the fans would love it too. There are tons of minor league parks and small to large colleges in that part of the country.
I mean, if people travel for MLB Spring Training then you could get a similar atmosphere in locales where people might be congregating anyway.
What about the overlap with basketball and football? Basketball overlaps with regular season football in November and then conference championships and bowl games in December and January. If we have overlap there why should we be so concerned with the overlap of baseball and basketball?
I don't particularly care for overlap there either. I'm not alone as there are people who discuss moving the basketball season from time to time.
Nonetheless, we were talking about baseball and not basketball so I didn't bring it up.
In fairness to the basketball schedule, it would be harder to move it past the end of the football season because football drags out so far past the end of the regular season.
Additionally, it's not really apples to apples anyway because these baseball programs are fighting for a smaller number of people. Basketball crowds are smaller than football crowds, but people tend to be willing to travel long distances for a football game. They are social events just as much as athletic events so fans will make a whole weekend of it and come from out of town, sometimes from quite far away.
It's less so with basketball and so you're depending on locals more and more. That effect is even more true in baseball...it's the locals that will carry your attendance for the most part. So that being the case for both basketball and baseball, I think it would be better if they weren't lined up against each other. It's less competition.
Now, it's also true that March Madness will take up most of the early season of baseball and those games aren't on campus. When it comes to that though, most sports fans are home watching a weekend full of NCAA tournament games...especially if it's cold outside.
So the baseball(and softball teams for that matter) are competing for fans when it's not really necessary.