2009 NCAA Baseball rule changes

The College Baseball Blog reported on several new changes in the rules for 2009, including:

The biggest change is the fact that they will require base coaches to wear a
helmet next season following the lead of Major League Baseball after the
unfortunate death of a minor league coach in 2007. One of the other rule changes
deal with speeding up the game with less conferences with umpires and on the
mound. The final rule change is to eliminate all the huddling around home plate
by a team after a home run or doing live play where teammates will come out of
the dugout.

There's a video discussion of the rules changes on YouTube.

DoubleAZone has more comments and quotes on the requirement for coaches to wear helmets:

According to Ty Halpin, associate director of playing rules administration at the NCAA, the MLB rule brought the committee's attention to the issue, but it was the reflection of many committee members that sealed the recommendation's passage. Many members remembered close calls where a ball nearly hit them.

"The more we talked about it, the more it made sense," Halpin said. "Coaches aren't always paying attention to the pitched ball; they're often
focusing on the runners."

It remains to be seen if college coaches will take issue with the rule the way many major league coaches, like Larry Bowa have. Bowa, the third-base coach for the Dodgers, initially refused to wear the helmet, telling various media outlets he'd walk to the base wearing shin guards, a chest protector and a facemask to make his point.

Rivals.com has news of even more possible changes:

For the past year, the NCAA has served as an agent of change for college baseball. Some coaches have agreed with the NCAA's new policies, while others have scoffed at the changes.

The NCAA may not be finished making changes.
. . .
"There has been a measure reviewed by many bodies at the NCAA to eliminate
distant travel in some of our postseason championship events."
. . .
Though a more regionalized postseason format irks some coaches, another part of the
proposed legislation seems sure to draw their ire. The NCAA says the new plan opens the door for teams from the same conference to be in the same regional.

For example, Texas and Texas A&M or Ole Miss and Mississippi State could be in the same regional in the future.

"I'm about as concerned with teams from the same conference being in the same regional as I am actually getting the teams to the regional site," Poppe said.

. . .
The uniform start date and condensed schedule remains a heated topic among coaches. Some coaches believe the condensed schedule promotes parity; others still view the change as detrimental to a student-athlete's developmental process on and off the field.

Though some coaches say that a week should be added to the schedule, don't look for any changes to be made before the 2009 season.
. . .
The NCAA is pondering the idea of decreasing the number of regular-season games from 56 to 52.

There also changes underway in requirements for the metal bats, according to College Baeball Blog:

The NCAA Baseball Research Panel, a group charged with maintaining the protocol for testing baseball bats in the college game, has recommended changes to the means for measuring performance in those tests.

The panel recommended replacing the “ball exit-speed ratio” with a “ball-bat coefficient of restitution” or BBCOR, because the latter eliminates discrepancies with
different length bats and is a more direct measure of bat performance. At its meeting in July, the NCAA Baseball Rules Committee, which oversees and determines the actual performance level of bats, approved the new protocol and established the performance standard based on data collected from available wooden bats.The committee and the research panel found that for a given bat length, batted-ball speed is a near-perfect correlation with BBCOR – that is, a bat’s BBCOR will predict the speed with which the ball will leave the bat.

Because wood and non-wood bats with the same BBCOR produce essentially the same batted-ball speeds, it is relatively easy to relate a non-wood bat’s performance
to that of a similarly sized wood bat.
. . .
To allow manufacturers sufficient time to adjust, the NCAA will enforce this standard beginning January 1, 2011, and will allow only BBCOR-certified bats in the 2011 season and beyond.

There will be no opportunity for “grandfathering” old bats.

Halpin said the change does mean that existing bats will need to be tested again, and that by 2011, bats will be required to be designated with a BBCOR certification mark to be considered legal.