Spring Sports: Too Early?
I’ve been wanting to write up a diary on the ridiculously early start dates for spring sports and how they affect the lacrosse, baseball and softball programs.
Personally, I’m excited the season is here so soon and that lacrosse already has a significant win under its belt. But, it sucks when May rolls around and their season is already over. And for a sport that is always seeking new audiences, it doesn’t make sense that they pit themselves against the still-ongoing winter sports season.
I believe the February start dates are hampering these sports’ popularity. The structure of the semester as well as the sports’ postseasons are creating a situation in which the first games creep earlier and earlier and significant portions of their schedules are played in the depths of winter. It’s miserable for the athletes to play these games and even more miserable for the fans to watch them. As a result, spectators don’t show up and this makes it difficult for these programs to get the attention and support they deserve.
Schedule Analysis
Yesterday was Valentine’s Day and softball and lacrosse have already played multiple games. Baseball starts on Friday. But the winter sports season isn’t close to being over yet. March Madness doesn’t start for another month and the Frozen 4 won’t be played for another seven weeks. Let’s take a look at these team’s schedules to see just how ridiculous they are. **I left the golf, tennis and track & field programs out of this analysis primarily because I don’t understand their seasons. Plus, I am more familiar with lacrosse, baseball and softball which I consider to be more spectator-oriented**
Lacrosse
Lacrosse is already 1-1, opening their season last weekend, February 6th at UNC. It was clear and cold. Despite the early February weather, 2,000 fans came out to see the game, which isn’t bad (and yesterday they had the fortune of playing in the friendly climate-controlled confines of Oosterbaan Fieldhouse). UNC is a program that usually brings in good crowds, especially in late-spring warm-weather matchups versus its hated rivals Duke and UVA. But, look at what the Michigan game was up against: that night the top 10 Tar Heels hoops team was hosting ACC foe Notre Dame. The lacrosse game wasn’t streamed either - the athletic department’s streaming service showed a gymnastics meet instead. Even if it was streamed the game was on at the same time as Michigan’s only regular season basketball game vs in-state rival Michigan State, so the small community of Michigan lacrosse fans on this board likely would’ve focused on that instead. Oh and the Carolina Panthers were in the Super Bowl that weekend. If you were a casual observer of UNC sports who had an interest in lacrosse, you likely had much bigger things on your plate that weekend.
This year, Michigan plays five games in the month of February, and a total of seven games before the ides of March. That’s half their schedule. This was unheard of in Division 1 even just a few years ago. They also only play one game on their spring break trip and they play zero regular season games in the month of May, when it’s actually nice.
Why does the season start so early you ask? Well, the college lacrosse season is built around Memorial Day which has been the traditional date for the national championship game. The schedule is created backwards from that. But, in the last several years the NCAA tournament field expanded to 16 teams and then again to 18 with play-in games. Also, the ever-shifting conference landscape has created bigger and bigger conferences and now most of them hold end-of-the-year conference tournaments to determine their champions and AQ bids. As a result there are virtually no dates in late April/early May to host home games. Teams compensate for this by scheduling games earlier and earlier which is how we end up with pre-Super Bowl lacrosse. If we’re playing lacrosse games before the NFL is even finished, then there’s something wrong.
Here are some examples of how this is hurting the game. On Saturday, #11 Loyola beat #7 UVA in Charlottesville in 25 degree weather. Only 1,200 fans were in the stands - in milder weather later in the season, that game brings in another thousand fans at least. Even worse, last week Hopkins and Navy played another chapter in their historic rivalry - on a nasty cold Tuesday night. Inside Lacrosse reported that in several recent meetings of the two teams attracted more than 10,000 fans. Hopkins-Navy is basically the equivalent of the Michigan-Notre Dame football rivalry, but on an awful, cold Tuesday night in February 2016, only 665 fans came out to see it. They might as well have played it on Christmas morning in a dark basement with the lights out.
Here is a great discussion on how even the coaches and players hate it. http://www.insidelacrosse.com/article/video-coaches-on-february-lacrosse/33897
Baseball
Winter and early spring in North America, especially in places like Big Ten country, is not a particularly nice time to do things outside. Nor is it a nice time to do summer-time activities like play baseball. This of course is a major obstacle for the northern teams, most of whom spend the first month of the season on the road in warm places like Florida, Texas and California.
College baseball is ruled by southern schools and those in places like California and Arizona. They can play outdoors year round and can recruit talent that often times is in its own backyard. A look at the past winners of the College World Series show that a northern team has not won the title since Ohio State in 1966 (Fresno St, Oregon St, Wichita St, Vandy and UVA are all non-super warm climate teams who have won, but in that time period there are no winners from east of the Mississippi and north of the Mason-Dixon).
The warm weather schools also don’t suffer road fatigue the way the northern schools do. Look at Michigan’s first month of games - they play five straight weeks of road games. That’s 19 consecutive away games including a pair of Saturday doubleheaders. Before they play their first home game on March 25th, they will have logged thousands of miles going to Florida, Hawaii, Oklahoma and five different cities in California. Contrast that with the schedules of teams like Texas, LSU and UCLA who host games in February and hardly have to go anywhere when they do go on the road.
Michigan baseball has a nice long homestand in April, but they play 36 games of their 50 regular season games on the road. If they make the tournament and CWS they could be playing as late as June 29th.
Softball
Like baseball, softball spends the first several weeks of their season in far-off warmer corners of the planet because it’s simply too cold to play in the midwest in February.
This year, Michigan kicked off the season in Tampa. Then they go to Tallahassee. Then it’s on to Palm Springs, Los Angeles, Fullerton and then Louisville. They finally play their first homestand on March 16. Out of 50 regular season games on the schedule, 34 of them are somewhere other than Ann Arbor. Their last home game is May 8 before finishing up the regular season on the road and then heading to the Big Ten and NCAA tournaments.
Softball is dominated by Western teams. Before Michigan won its first national championship in 2005, no team east of the Mississippi had ever won the Women’s College World Series. A look at the past winners of the WCWS shows that Michigan is the only northern team that consistently competes for the national title. Having one of the best coaches in all of sports may be the thing that helps Michigan get over its climate handicap.
If Michigan goes deep this year, as expected, they could be playing as late as June 8th.
Solutions
From a markets perspective, the spring sports season is saturated. The month of March is dominated by the NCAA basketball tournament, to the point that most people stop paying attention to the NBA and NHL (I definitely do). After that we have Major League Baseball’s Opening Day. Later in April, the NHL and NBA begin their marathon playoff slags that go to June. Also in the spring we have other American sports traditions like the Masters, the Triple Crown, the Indy 500 and the NFL Draft. Niche and non-revenue sports are going to have a hard time trying to compete in this media landscape.
But there is a simple solution - move the seasons back, even just a few weeks. If these sports play most of their meaningful games when people will see them, their popularity is likely to grow. While the field is crowded in spring, there is a significant drop-off in late May. By the end of May the NBA and NHL have whittled down to only a few teams and their games are often few and far between. They’re done in mid June at the latest and unless it’s an Olympic or World Cup year, there is only pro baseball for the next three months until football starts up again.
Sports-wise there is little to do on college campuses once the basketball and hockey programs finish up their regular season. But, by the time it’s actually nice enough to sit outside and take in a game, the baseball, softball and lacrosse teams are wrapping up their seasons. Summer in AA is great, but I would’ve loved to have played some home lacrosse games in early May and been able to go see some baseball and softball games in June.
For lacrosse, the answer is simple - just move the championships back a week. Memorial Day can still be a huge weekend for the sport - they can even play the first two rounds of the tournament on the Saturday and Monday - the way they do with the Final 4 now. This would essentially shorten the tournament and open up more days in early May for on-campus games. More importantly, it would eliminate the need for early February games. They could also create a hard start date of March 1st (more realistically February 21st) and require all teams to play 3 or 4 games on their spring break.
Baseball/softball should also push back a few weeks. I would love to see them start the season in March and play both the CWS and WCWS on the July 4th weekend or even later. The northern teams should lobby hard for a calendar change like this so they don’t have to spend the first six weeks of their seasons on the road.
Alternatively, they could move to a summer season. There has been talk on mgoblog that the Big Ten should consider scrapping baseball/softball as spring sports and create a summer season. Of course the downside of this would be that B1G teams wouldn’t be able to compete in the NCAA tourney/CWS. And it would make it difficult for these student-athletes to rest and get important summer jobs and internships. Nevertheless, I am intrigued by this idea. I think it would add an interesting feature to college towns in the summer and would make the sports more popular.
And while these sports are non-revenue, I wonder if they would make more money if they were played in the summer. And that’s really the only language the NCAA understands.
Of course, these sports will always have to compete with other college and pro sports for the hearts, minds and eyes of fans. But, I think the current set-up makes it difficult for these programs to succeed. The NCAA should make it easier for athletes and fans to enjoy the spring sports season.
February 15th, 2016 at 2:56 PM ^
The tough part about moving the lax championship back a week is that they're always held in a neutral location and the NCAA rather justifiably wants to allow for people to be able to travel and fill up the venue, which they can't do the weekend after Memorial Day. Now you're playing on a work day, and the weekend after a holiday weekend is a really low time for travel.
Baseball-wise, it's hard to justify going all the way into July. Players going deep in the tournament would likely lose their chance to play in the summer wood-bat leagues - they're already joining late as it is. Take it that deep into the summer and they miss so much of that season they probably don't get to play at all. Not good for development. I assume, by the way, when you say "play the CWS on July 4 weekend" you mean the finals, as the CWS refers to the whole 8-team double elimination tournament in Omaha. It lasts two weeks.
A better solution for baseball would be to get about a month worth of the season out of the way in September, then start back up in March. It'd be a little strange and incongruous, but it would go a long way toward solving the north-south imbalance. Of course, for that very reason, the southern teams would fight it tooth and nail.
February 15th, 2016 at 3:01 PM ^
Lights-out basement lacrosse? New Christmas tradition? Yes, please.
February 15th, 2016 at 4:34 PM ^
It's interesting to me how different lacrosse teams use their 17 allowable dates. Some teams scrimmage once in the fall. Some twice. Some scrimmage a bunch in the spring/late winter before they start their regular season. (Michigan seems to usually be 2x in the fall and 1x preseason). Some teams don't scrimmage at all (Duke) and then cram more games into the season by playing more multiple-game weeks.
I'm sure every coach has his philosophy on scheduling, but for some teams it must also have to do with budget and class misses in the off-season.
One of the weirdest scheduling things, to me at least, is that the ACC and at least one other conference hold their tournament a week before everyone else. So they play their conference tournament, then have another regular season non-conference game (or no game) the next week before the NCAA tournament starts.
February 15th, 2016 at 5:04 PM ^
"They could also create a hard start date of March 1st (more realistically February 21st) and require all teams to play 3 or 4 games on their spring break."
The SEC would have to come out strongly against this.
February 15th, 2016 at 5:12 PM ^
with the spring sports calendar, a lot of schedule construction is dictated by something that can't/won't be changed: the academic calendar. After all, we're talking about college and the fact that the vast majority of college athletes reach the end of their athletic careers when they graduate or use up their college eligibility.
Spring sports fit in much better for high school athletics, as the school year ends around the first of June. Colleges, on the other hand, end their school year much earlier, some by the end of April. And this gives southern schools a huge spring sport advantage over northern schools in so many ways----while we can right now look out our windows at snow that won't completely disappear for at least a month, southern-tier states are already enjoying the kind of weather we (hope to) see some time around the first of May or so.
February 16th, 2016 at 5:03 AM ^
I realize that Michigan's early end of semester relative to most other schools drives the date of the Spring football game, but the game is held so early in April that weather is often a consideration for those of us not living in Ann Arbor where it's easy in, easy out.
February 16th, 2016 at 9:47 AM ^
I'm unsure how one "writes up" something. I just write something.
February 16th, 2016 at 10:57 AM ^
Will the Big Ten please move softball and baseball to the Spring/Summer. The SEC does not want to turn thier late Winter geography advantage into a disadvantage. Spring and Summer, when these sports are intended to be played, can be brutal in the South. So they can come up North for a month or so to avoid the humid heat and blood thirsty ticks, chiggers, and zika infected mosquitoes.
February 16th, 2016 at 12:13 PM ^
The calendar is set up the way it is because the academic calendar ends June 30 and resets July 1 (the date when official conference affiliations change). The College World Series goes about as late as it can, until late June. The season therefore starts at the end of February. One solution for baseball/softball/lacrosse is simply to ax the games at the beginning of the season where they are on the road anyway, and start playing games mid-March. Strength of schedule considerations apply, but is it a bad thing to simply not play 10-15 baseball/softball games and ~5 lacrosse games instead of playing them all on the road? Nobody is forcing them to play those games.
February 16th, 2016 at 1:47 PM ^
Being in the north these trips to warm places are the best way to get ready for the season. There is only so much a team can do inside. Having live games is the best thing to do to prepare for conference games. If all B1G teams were to go to this, you can say goodbye to any teams going to the CWS. Also as a player these spring trips are what we look foward to at the beginning of the season.
February 19th, 2016 at 9:04 AM ^
Michigan baseball has its first game today!!
February 20th, 2016 at 9:39 AM ^
The main problem is that school is on summer break during the ideal time of the year to play baseball. In most states north of SEC country the ideal months for baseball are May-Sept. Everyone knows the summer is a time for baseball. However, colleges are all out of school by late May which means they have to fit in a 40-50 game schedule from Feb-May. Only the playoffs go later.
As a former college baseball player I loved the length of the season. However I was not a pitcher nor was I being scouted as a high school player, and I attended a small school. As a young kid in Texas weather was never a problem, however most of my adolescence and young adult years I lived in the Northeast where playing baseball in the spring was a challenge. You couldn't count on the weather until May. Our college baseball season typically started with practice in late January. We went to Florida every spring break in late March for 10 days and typically played about 12-15 games in that short time. We also had a short fall season that usually was practices, conditioning, and a few games against local teams as scrimmages where we mostly tested out our young players. The fall "season" was typically only from mid-September through mid-October.
IMO the baseball season is much harder on academics and balancing student athletes time than football. It may not be as big of a business and they may not watch film and the like, but it involves more travel and time away from school. I think the college season is a problem for athletes trying to transition to professional baseball because it forces them to play in the summer as well, which makes for a really long year, especially for pitchers. There are also all sorts of showcases during the fall that scouts attend.
Particularly the southern states high school seasons are so long it limits baseball players from playing other sports, which makes the situation worse. This is the hardest on pitchers and their arms with few limitations on pitch counts. Many young pitchers with pro potential are burned out from all this, not to mention high school and college coaches who over use them. If I'm looking at this from a strength coach's perspective the season is way too long and young baseball players with the potential to make it as a professional are expected to specialize way too early. This leads to all sorts of overuse injuries and can also be a problem with keeping players mentally fresh and motivated. The system is really not ideal. As a young player I loved the season, but I wasn't playing a 50 game spring schedule in Florida either and I attended a small college where we only played 30 games, only spent one week in Florida, and rarely had to travel out of state to play games. If you go to high school in Florida and are a pitcher with pro-potential it gets a lot more dicey.
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