The University of Alabama, along with every college under contract with Nike, has been released from its obligation to use Nike baseball bats in the upcoming season.
Alabama requested that Nike allow the school to use other manufacturers' bats following the 2010-11 season.
The move came after a Tuscaloosa News report in May revealed a striking difference in the performance of Nike bats as compared to other manufacturers.
♦ Nike's bewildering college baseball bat problems (thepostgame.com)
Of the top 20 teams in home runs last season, not a single one used Nike bats.
Major schools such as Southern Cal, Miami, Alabama, Georgia and Kentucky all used Nike bats and experienced major drops in offensive production. Home runs were 20 percent lower and slugging percentages 44 percent lower for those teams than for the rest of the NCAA.
♦ Nike releases schools from bat obligations (baseballamerica.com)
It will be interesting if other Nike schools—Georgia, Kentucky, Miami, North Carolina and Southern California are five notable ones—elect to stick with Nike bats or switch, and whether their offensive performance is affected. The Tuscaloosa paper reports that those five Nike schools and Alabama hit 20 percent fewer home runs and slugged 44 percent lower than the national average. But how much of that performance gap was a product of the bats, and how much was a product of personnel, or the superior quality of pitching in power conferences, relative to the national average? Cherry-picking statistics—especially when considering a miniscule sample size—inevitably leads to faulty conclusions.
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