Ohio State/ Big Ten baseball

Spartacus1987

Well-known member
Don’t understand why we don’t have a college baseball forum but I thought I would put this here. Ohio State baseball used to be actually a solid program but has become such a late term abortion type bad that I haven’t watched a full game of theirs since I think 2019 (they don’t deserve my time or money). My grandpa has got to be watching from heaven in total disgust (former OSU baseball captain from the 60s).

From the little bit I do follow and what I understand their head coach now wasn’t even their first choice and they wanted to get the Vanderbilt pitching coach but that coach wanted to completely revolutionize things and OSU wasn’t going to do that. (Thanks Gene Smith for continuing to destroy OSU athletics)

Here we are now and I see that a few weeks ago OSU made the Big Ten baseball tournament for the first time in a few years and people were actually applauding this. Making a conference tournament for a conference that’s had one CWS participant I believe in the last 30ish years? That is just disgusting and despicable.

Here I am today watching Nebraska who won the Big Ten tournament play a middle of the pack SEC team in Florida and LOSE. How can anyone support this? How can anyone watch this and ever get excited? Granted I make sure to watch the College baseball tournament every year and cheer on every Big Ten team in the tournament in the hopes SOMEBODY can have a Michigan type run from 2019 but it appears highly unlikely.

I definitely rip on the Big Ten for having atrocious Football and Basketball but Big Ten baseball should honestly be discontinued with their complete lack of competitiveness on the national scale. It’s so bad that they don’t deserve to exist.

For Ohio State it really would be simple enough to hire the right guy to coach the team and keep the best players in Ohio. If Kentucky and Louisville can have respectable baseball programs then so can OSU.
 
 
Don’t understand why we don’t have a college baseball forum but I thought I would put this here. Ohio State baseball used to be actually a solid program but has become such a late term abortion type bad that I haven’t watched a full game of theirs since I think 2019 (they don’t deserve my time or money). My grandpa has got to be watching from heaven in total disgust (former OSU baseball captain from the 60s).

From the little bit I do follow and what I understand their head coach now wasn’t even their first choice and they wanted to get the Vanderbilt pitching coach but that coach wanted to completely revolutionize things and OSU wasn’t going to do that. (Thanks Gene Smith for continuing to destroy OSU athletics)

Here we are now and I see that a few weeks ago OSU made the Big Ten baseball tournament for the first time in a few years and people were actually applauding this. Making a conference tournament for a conference that’s had one CWS participant I believe in the last 30ish years? That is just disgusting and despicable.

Here I am today watching Nebraska who won the Big Ten tournament play a middle of the pack SEC team in Florida and LOSE. How can anyone support this? How can anyone watch this and ever get excited? Granted I make sure to watch the College baseball tournament every year and cheer on every Big Ten team in the tournament in the hopes SOMEBODY can have a Michigan type run from 2019 but it appears highly unlikely.

I definitely rip on the Big Ten for having atrocious Football and Basketball but Big Ten baseball should honestly be discontinued with their complete lack of competitiveness on the national scale. It’s so bad that they don’t deserve to exist.

For Ohio State it really would be simple enough to hire the right guy to coach the team and keep the best players in Ohio. If Kentucky and Louisville can have respectable baseball programs then so can OSU.
Believe it or not, I agree with you on all of this. OSU is barely competitive in baseball and that's a crime. I watch when I can only because a couple of guys from Walsh are on the team.
 
Believe it or not, I agree with you on all of this. OSU is barely competitive in baseball and that's a crime. I watch when I can only because a couple of guys from Walsh are on the team.
Depends on what you define as competitive. On the national scale OSU is not competitive at all. They are “competitive” I guess in the Big Ten which as I said before is playing a different game than the rest of the country.
 
Depends on what you define as competitive. On the national scale OSU is not competitive at all. They are “competitive” I guess in the Big Ten which as I said before is playing a different game than the rest of the country.
.500 in the Big 10 is mediocre. Absolutely not talking on a national scale.
 
Ok fair enough
52% of the players on their roster are from Ohio. I dont typically follow OSU baseball recruiting that close, but I would have to believe thats the best they can do. And I dont think its the cream of the crop in Ohio either. Tough to get kids from the South or West coast to come to the Midwest to play baseball.
 
52% of the players on their roster are from Ohio. I dont typically follow OSU baseball recruiting that close, but I would have to believe thats the best they can do. And I dont think its the cream of the crop in Ohio either. Tough to get kids from the South or West coast to come to the Midwest to play baseball.
I don’t believe so, if they get the right manager and funding in place then Ohio’s best players would stay home. There needs to be a belief by the HS kids first though. Gene Smith really destroyed OSU baseball, maybe Bjork can resurrect it.
 
Not sure it's that easy to fix. A lot of the kids they lose out on, at least to me looking at the last few years of PBR data, are Cincinnati area kids that are mostly going to UK and Louisville. Some have gone to Indiana. A few eastern and NE Ohio kids end up at West Virginia.

The last three years there's been roughly 8 Ohio kids per class that have signed with SEC and ACC schools...mostly going to UK, Louisville, and includes those that got drafted and just skipped school and went pro. They need to be better competing for the SW Ohio kids that pick UK, Louisville, and IU, but otherwise not sure how much better they could do with in-state talent. There's not exactly a dearth of it leaving Ohio for national programs.
 
Bottom line: probably at best get towards the upper part of the Big Ten with better in-state recruiting.

Nationally going to be entirely irrelevant without getting quality players from the south and west coast.
 
Not sure it's that easy to fix. A lot of the kids they lose out on, at least to me looking at the last few years of PBR data, are Cincinnati area kids that are mostly going to UK and Louisville. Some have gone to Indiana. A few eastern and NE Ohio kids end up at West Virginia.

The last three years there's been roughly 8 Ohio kids per class that have signed with SEC and ACC schools...mostly going to UK, Louisville, and includes those that got drafted and just skipped school and went pro. They need to be better competing for the SW Ohio kids that pick UK, Louisville, and IU, but otherwise not sure how much better they could do with in-state talent. There's not exactly a dearth of it leaving Ohio for national programs.
Those kids should not be going to those programs over OSU. That’s a big problem. Also need to get a legit coach, and not a plan B or C guy.
 
Bump. Big Ten completely eliminated after today. None of the teams even made the final game of their regional. There are no words to describe such an atrocity of a baseball conference.
 
Those kids should not be going to those programs over OSU. That’s a big problem. Also need to get a legit coach, and not a plan B or C guy.
Maybe if some moron on a message board would stop putting tOSU down with every post some of them would consider. You keep saying tOSU is crap in every sport and then complain why better players don’t come.
 
Maybe if some moron on a message board would stop putting tOSU down with every post some of them would consider. You keep saying tOSU is crap in every sport and then complain why better players don’t come.
This may be one of the dumbest things I have ever read.
 
You would be the expert on dumb. It’s all you’ve got - every one of your posts.
Only a dumb person would have your kind of response, rather than try and explain to me why you believe me to be wrong. Just shows you lack any mental capacity to have a simple discussion.
 
Only a dumb person would have your kind of response, rather than try and explain to me why you believe me to be wrong. Just shows you lack any mental capacity to have a simple discussion.
One of us said the Diebler hire was terrible.
Not me.

One of us realizes the baseball performance had been declining, and tOSU made a change at head coach.
One of us realizes this new head coach has only had two years, but has a better winning percentage than the previous head coach.
One of us thinks a coach needs more than a couple years, especially while showing improvement, to be evaluated.
Not you.

You just blast everything tOSU without any sound reasons. You just always like other coaches and players more than the ones on staff, roster.

Many have tried to reason past you arrogance, but you just act like a child and ignore their sound reasoning.
 
How many fans actually follow college baseball/soccer/lacrosse/golf/etc.?
Do most college sports lose money?
“You're talking about 95 percent of colleges that probably spend somewhere between … $40 million and $5 million on college sports, and they lose money,” Baker said.Feb 24, 2024
In the new era of NIL and paying players, will having so many nonrevenue sports even make sense?
1.23.2024
Ohio State’s athletic department had "a record-breaking year in operating revenue" in FY2023 by generating just over $279.5M with expenses of more than $274.9M. OSU's revenue total "edged out Texas A&M" for the most nationally. The school's revenue increased $28M from FY2022, "an increase of about 11%." Most of that came from "more football ticket sales and because Ohio State had eight home games in 2022 compared to seven in '21." OSU’s football program generated more than $127M in FY2023 with a surplus of $55M, while men’s basketball had revenues over $24M with a profit of almost $10M. Those sports "subsidized the rest of OSU’s 34 sports, which had costs exceeding revenues by almost" $56m. OSU had "a big increase" in revenue from royalties, licensing, advertising and sponsorships, going from $30M the previous year to almost $43M (COLUMBUS DISPATCH, 1/23).
 
News flash for the clearly uninformed - the SEC and Texas/Cali schools have a built-in advantage called climate. Their youth and HS kids play baseball almost year round, and the vast majority of the top players are from a warm weather state. Yes, Ohio and other northern states have some very good players, but the quantity is far lower than the warmer states. For decades the top kids have been going and playing for schools closer to home and those college programs have the advantage of a long history of success, both in terms of winning and getting kids drafted. That continues to impact recruiting today.

Overcoming the long history and the climate disadvantage is not "Simple", and just because a Yappi poster is angry about that doesn't make it easy to change overnight. And frankly, we've had the revenue discussion before where I showed that even schools like LSU have baseball revenue dwarfed by football and basketball. So OSU is not going to spend through the roof to try to speed up success. It is not fiscally viable.

Ice hockey works in reverse. Are the SEC schools rushing to get a bunch of kids from up north to play for them? They all suck at hockey down there. I'm guessing they have one or two mental cases on message boards down there p---ed off about it. Oh well.

So hopefully the new OSU baseball coach keeps improving, and maybe someday the team wins a league title - that would be great.
 
When I was growing up in northern Ohio, you couldn't find a vacant baseball field during the summer. We had neighborhood pickup baseball games just about everyday. I can't remember the last time I have seen a pickup baseball game. There is organized baseball and in my town, little league is done by the 4th of July. Kids are on their computers and have no interest in going outside to play. Different priorities.
 
One of us said the Diebler hire was terrible.
Not me.

One of us realizes the baseball performance had been declining, and tOSU made a change at head coach.
One of us realizes this new head coach has only had two years, but has a better winning percentage than the previous head coach.
One of us thinks a coach needs more than a couple years, especially while showing improvement, to be evaluated.
Not you.

You just blast everything tOSU without any sound reasons. You just always like other coaches and players more than the ones on staff, roster.

Many have tried to reason past you arrogance, but you just act like a child and ignore their sound reasoning.
My reasons are actually very sound, lack of success and no accountability.
 
How many fans actually follow college baseball/soccer/lacrosse/golf/etc.?
Do most college sports lose money?
“You're talking about 95 percent of colleges that probably spend somewhere between … $40 million and $5 million on college sports, and they lose money,” Baker said.Feb 24, 2024
In the new era of NIL and paying players, will having so many nonrevenue sports even make sense?
1.23.2024
Ohio State’s athletic department had "a record-breaking year in operating revenue" in FY2023 by generating just over $279.5M with expenses of more than $274.9M. OSU's revenue total "edged out Texas A&M" for the most nationally. The school's revenue increased $28M from FY2022, "an increase of about 11%." Most of that came from "more football ticket sales and because Ohio State had eight home games in 2022 compared to seven in '21." OSU’s football program generated more than $127M in FY2023 with a surplus of $55M, while men’s basketball had revenues over $24M with a profit of almost $10M. Those sports "subsidized the rest of OSU’s 34 sports, which had costs exceeding revenues by almost" $56m. OSU had "a big increase" in revenue from royalties, licensing, advertising and sponsorships, going from $30M the previous year to almost $43M (COLUMBUS DISPATCH, 1/23).
This needs to be posted on billboards across the country. Most people have no idea how expensive these programs are. Only the biggest programs can live in this NIL world. And the non revenue sports may be on the chopping block some day soon because the first time the TV money dries up, this is over.
 
News flash for the clearly uninformed - the SEC and Texas/Cali schools have a built-in advantage called climate. Their youth and HS kids play baseball almost year round, and the vast majority of the top players are from a warm weather state. Yes, Ohio and other northern states have some very good players, but the quantity is far lower than the warmer states. For decades the top kids have been going and playing for schools closer to home and those college programs have the advantage of a long history of success, both in terms of winning and getting kids drafted. That continues to impact recruiting today.

Overcoming the long history and the climate disadvantage is not "Simple", and just because a Yappi poster is angry about that doesn't make it easy to change overnight. And frankly, we've had the revenue discussion before where I showed that even schools like LSU have baseball revenue dwarfed by football and basketball. So OSU is not going to spend through the roof to try to speed up success. It is not fiscally viable.

Ice hockey works in reverse. Are the SEC schools rushing to get a bunch of kids from up north to play for them? They all suck at hockey down there. I'm guessing they have one or two mental cases on message boards down there p---ed off about it. Oh well.

So hopefully the new OSU baseball coach keeps improving, and maybe someday the team wins a league title - that would be great.
It is REALLY, REALLY difficult for the big ten and northern schools to compete in baseball. Yes, there is baseball talent up here, but many do go south for college and who blames them? You can play more, workout more. Playing baseball games in March is really hard up here but they have to do it.
That said I do enjoy watching the college world series. There is some really good talent in the college level, even a guy like LSU's Paul Skenes is already up with the Pirates and the Reds #1 pick Rhett Lowder is doing well in single and double A so far.
I remember years back a young man from Hamilton, Ohio, a catcher at Indiana University in one of their best seasons ever, Kyle Schwarber.
 
When I was growing up in northern Ohio, you couldn't find a vacant baseball field during the summer. We had neighborhood pickup baseball games just about everyday. I can't remember the last time I have seen a pickup baseball game. There is organized baseball and in my town, little league is done by the 4th of July. Kids are on their computers and have no interest in going outside to play. Different priorities.
Same was true in Columbus where I grew up 55 years ago. I have a son that graduated in the early 2010's from a Columbus high school and organized ball was the only way he could play growing up - no other neighborhood kids wanted to play. He pitched in college (D-II) and all of his teammates were from Maryland and further south. The geography/climate challenge for Northern kids is very real.
 
When I was growing up in northern Ohio, you couldn't find a vacant baseball field during the summer. We had neighborhood pickup baseball games just about everyday. I can't remember the last time I have seen a pickup baseball game. There is organized baseball and in my town, little league is done by the 4th of July. Kids are on their computers and have no interest in going outside to play. Different priorities.
I have 4 brothers and thats all we did...pick up baseball games all summer. I have 12 nephews and was shocked to hear only 2 owned baseball mitts. They all play sports, just not baseball. I was showing them how to toss a bat for "ups". They thought I had a screw loose. Different times for sure.
 
This needs to be posted on billboards across the country. Most people have no idea how expensive these programs are. Only the biggest programs can live in this NIL world. And the non revenue sports may be on the chopping block some day soon because the first time the TV money dries up, this is over.
The whole “we should be paying the players “ is a nice idea until they have to figure out what doesn’t get funded in order to have monies to pay them.
 
I have 4 brothers and thats all we did...pick up baseball games all summer. I have 12 nephews and was shocked to hear only 2 owned baseball mitts. They all play sports, just not baseball. I was showing them how to toss a bat for "ups". They thought I had a screw loose. Different times for sure.
And this just doesn’t make any sense to me.
Number of colleges in all divisions with
Football teams - 858
Men’s basketball teams - 1400
Baseball teams - 1700

Just no hype about the college World Series
Football playoffs and March madness crazy hyped.

Men’s softball used to be e big thing also. Multiple games almost every night and multiple tournaments every weekend. Hardly any leagues any more.
 
Good news, baseball coach IMO moved on before getting fired. Time to go get a big time guy out of the SEC. Program was trash under this guy.
Good luck getting a top tier SEC/ACC coach. Tune into any weekend game in those conferences and the places are rocking. The fan excitement is unrivaled. Big Ten fans could be confused for a US Open tennis or golf crowd. From the looks of it Mosiello tried to work with promotions to get the students to the games. Having a lack of fan and student interest coupled with a stadium situated around turf fields, parking lots and concrete isn’t the recipe to competing for elite recruits.
 
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