Mark Schnabel: SportSpeak
Hello and I hope everyone had a happy holiday.
Welcome to a little school-year end roundup of things here at the Kansan Sports Desk at my temporary office in the concourse of Koch Arena, the media area of the state track meet.
It’s a much different looking Cessna Stadium with more changes to come. The visitors’ stands are down, replaced by a set of bleachers that wouldn’t look out of place at a Class 2A high school football stadium.
The main grandstand will come down sometime in 2025 or 2026 with a new grandstand. The track will expand to nine lanes. The infield will be sized for a regulation soccer field with some discussion that Wichita State would pick up the sport.
Parking lots have already closed. The pole vault and jumping pits will be moved outside the track. The seating capacity will be dramatically reduced, but outside of state track, that was never a factor.
Those hoping for a football revival here will be disappointed. Unless the Shockers go for the FCS ranks (or the more obscure Division I-AAA, no scholarship level), no football is planned.
There would have to be a new site for a much larger stadium (35,000 or more) to support football. And people would have to actually buy tickets, unlike the sub-5,000 attendance marks Shocker football used to attract before budgetary problems shut it down.
Like I said earlier, there has been talk of bringing soccer to Shocker land. It makes sense. There are no Division I men’s programs (and just a couple Division II schools) in the state. The two big schools sponsor women’s soccer, but top-level high school boys either have to settle for a lower level or go out of state.
Outside of travel and coaching costs, soccer makes sense fiscally. It’s not a fully-funded sport like football or basketball. Men’s teams get something like 9.9 scholarships to split among 20 players, while women split 12 scholarships.
MORE RULES I’D LIKE TO SEE CHANGED
It’s that time where I get to issue more beefs in the world of sports.
I’m going to start with college softball. It’s a fun game to watch. I read somewhere that last year, the NCAA Division I College Softball World Series actually got slightly better TV ratings than the College Baseball World Series, but the college game needs some adjustments.
We’re going to start with the length of the game. This will mainly pertain to the Division I level, where teams have gotten away from the doubleheader and are playing single games.
If teams are going to play single games, lets make them nine innings. With two good pitchers and teams playing good defense, a seven-inning game can last an hour – sometimes even less than that.
Teams may travel 200 or more miles to play a mid-week, non-conference game, get off the bus, get on the field and play between an hour to 90 minutes. Then they shower, load up the bus and travel 200 or more miles to get back home.
Very inefficient.
Either go back to doubleheaders or lets make the games nine innings.
I did hear a coach whine last year about post-season tournaments that required more than one game in a day. These same players, while on summer high school travel teams, would play tournaments with up to four or five games a day. It’s not like baseball, where a pitcher could really struggle with going too many innings. One hundred pitches in softball doesn’t strain the arm the way 100 pitches in baseball will.
The next change has to do with the substitution rule. It’s time to eliminate the re-entry rule. That’s right. When a player is substituted, that player is done.
There are several reasons for this. The first is to encourage more athletic players and well-rounded players. Too many teams are relying on too many specialists. You have players who can hit, but can’t run a lick. So the player gets a hit and someone else has to run. Let’s develop players who can do both.
The second will force coaches to actually employ more and better strategies. When it’s time to make a change, you are going to have to think about when and where to make those changes.
(I will allow for college to adopt the courtesy runner for the catcher. That just speeds up things a little).
Eliminate the designated player and the flex and go to the designated hitter. Again, it forces more well-rounded players and it forces coaches to manage.
Last, but not least (and this goes for all levels and for baseball as well), lets get rid of the armbands and every little thing called from the dugout (both on offense and defense).
On defense, a good catcher knows what pitch to call from her pitcher against the player at bat. Let the pitcher and catcher figure it out. If you have to make a call for a defensive adjustment or a defensive play, do it. If you work on it long enough in practice, the players will know what to do in specific situations.
On offense, use the system that has worked for more than a century – signals. You want a bunt, signal a bunt. You want a player to steal, signal a steal. Hit and run, signal it.
Today, a coach calls a number from the dugout and every player has to step back, look on the wristband (which sometimes is longer than the menu at a Denny’s) and figure out what to do. A player used to know what to do.
Mark Schnabel is the sports editor for the Kansan.
