Columnist Ron Kantowski: College coaches want summer slate

Thursday, Jan. 9, 2003 | 10:05 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's insider notes column appears Tuesday and his Page One column appears Thursday. He can be reached at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

Crazy ideas are like SUVs -- seemingly everybody has one.

The most intriguing one I've heard this week belongs to UNLV baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle, who thinks the college game would be a lot better off if it would move to summer.

"College baseball is one of the most untapped resources in college athletics," Schlossnagle says before you can accuse of him of not having his batting helmet strapped on tight. "Unfortunately, it has become very regional, (dominated by) the southern and western schools, because of the weather.

"It's the only sport that doesn't play at the same time as (its professional counterpart). The College World Series is over in June when the big leagues are just getting started."

Schlossnagle's line of thinking is based on the following notions: If baseball is one of the big three American team sports (four if you count hockey), and if Michigan vs. Michigan State is such a big deal during the fall and winter, then why isn't it worth painting your face for in the spring?

As he says, when Michigan and Michigan State play on Nov. 4, there's 106,000 fans in the stands. But when they play on April 4, there might be 106. But maybe, just maybe, if they played on June 4, about the time it's finally safe to park the snow plows in Ann Arbor and East Lansing, there might be 5,000.

There are other advantages. By playing during the summer, baseball student-athletes would be more of the former and less of the latter. The biggest drawback is that by moving baseball to summer, schools would incur additional costs, such as room and board, at a time when most are considering hiring a monkey and a tin cup to stretch already tight athletic budgets.

Schlossnagle said that's where TV comes in.

Noboby's interested in watching college baseball during March Madness. But in the summer months, when outside of the major leagues there are 57 channels but nothing on that appeals to the sports fan, Schlossnagle says college baseball could become an option for all those cable networks looking for summer programming.

And he said a TV contract would pay a lot of bills.

"We need to put the cart before the horse," he said. "If we do this, we can be on television more, and if we're on television more, we can sell more tickets and become more fan oriented."

The blueprint is the same one that makes college football and college basketball so popular, but there's a difference. Whereas the NFL and the NBA are perfectly happy to let the colleges develop their players, Major League Baseball considers the college coaches no more qualified than Morris Buttermaker of the Bad News Bears.

Moreover, if college baseball plays in the summer, how would it impact the major league draft?

For those and other reasons, the proposal probably will get no further than the lounge at the college baseball coaches convention, where it is being batted around now. But I see where Schlossnagle and his contemporaries are coming from. If college football and basketball are revenue-producers at many schools, why shouldn't college baseball be able to achieve the same status?

I'm sure that every time "The Osbournes" come on MTV, whoever sold the E Channel on Anna Nicole Smith has a similar thought.