Creighton has reached an agreement with the Omaha Metropolitan Entertainment and Convention Authority (MECA) for the Bluejays to play their home games at TD Ameritrade Park Omaha, the future home of the College World Series starting in 2011. The MECA board approved a 10-year lease agreement with Creighton on Tuesday.

Under the lease agreement, Creighton will play some home games in 2011 and all of its home games in 2012 at the new park. [...] Continue Reading »

Gary Carter is leaving the Atlantic League for Division II baseball.

Carter, the Hall of Fame catcher best known as a player for the Expos and Mets, will become head coach at Division II Palm Beach Atlantic, near his Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., home. Carter managed the Long Island Ducks in 2009 and in the independent Golden League in 2008, after managing for two seasons in the Mets farm system.

Carter, 55, has lived in the area since 1982—the Expos used to have their spring training home in West Palm Beach—and his daughter is a softball coach at the school. He will work with present Sailfish head coach Rob Avila this coming season and will take over the program on his own on June 1, 2010.

He’s the second Hall of Famer coaching in college, joining San Diego State’s Tony Gwynn.

The New York Times is reporting that the NCAA has agreed to pay former Oklahoma State lefthander Andy Oliver $750,000 to settle the lawsuit between the two sides. Oliver had sued the NCAA after he was ruled ineligible for being represented by a lawyer in negotiations with the Twins after he was drafted in high school.

The more significant development with the settlement is that it marks a return to the status quo. In February, Erie County (Ohio) judge Tygh M. Tone ruled in Oliver’s favor and prohibited the NCAA from enforcing its "no agent" rule. But today, Tone dismissed the case at the parties’ request and vacated the order that barred the NCAA from enforcing the "no agent" rule.

Clearly, the rule is vulnerable to legal challenges, but for now, at least, the NCAA can go back to prohibiting players from having representation in their dealings with pro clubs. [...] Continue Reading »

Former Oklahoma State and current Detroit Tigers lefthander Andy Oliver has settled his lawsuit with the NCAA, just two weeks before a jury trial was scheduled to begin in Ohio.

Oliver already won the first phase of the trial when an Ohio judge ordered the reinstatement of his eligibility in February. Oliver also sued the NCAA for breach of contract and damages, and those complaints were settled this week. Terms are confidential.

"I believe we would have tried and won a very large judgment, the NCAA would have appealed and this would have dragged on for three to five more years," Oliver’s lawyer, Rick Johnson, told the USA Today. " . . . This was all about the right to counsel. (The NCAA) punished this kid because he had a lawyer. It was absurd from the beginning, and it should never have come to this."

NCAA president Myles Brand died Wednesday after a nine-month battle with pancreatic cancer.

Brand, 67, was diagnosed with the disease in January.

Though former Mississippi State coach Ron Polk famously crusaded against Brand for years over the NCAA’s relationship with baseball, American Baseball Coaches Association executive director Dave Keilitz has long maintained that Brand is a great ally for the sport. Last year there was some momentum on the Board of Directors to reduce baseball’s games from 56 to 52 or 50, but Brand assured coaches he would fight to ensure they kept 56 games, and they did. Brand further showed his support to the coaches by appearing and speaking at a coaches summit in Indianapolis last November.

"I thought his talk was the most significant thing of the whole event," Keilitz said last November. "What the coaches heard and saw was, ‘Wow, we’ve got somebody here at the very top that cares for us and supports us.’ That’s the message he conveyed, and I think the coaches felt very, very good about that."

Brand has been the NCAA’s president since 2003.

"Myles Brand was a dear friend and a great academic leader. He was a tireless advocate for the student-athlete," Georgia president Michael Adams, the chair of the NCAA executive committee, said in a statement. "Indeed, he worked to ensure that the student was first in the student-athlete model. He will be greatly missed."

San Diego announced Monday that it has hired a replacement for pitching coach Eric Valenzuela, who left to take a job at crosstown rival San Diego State last month. USD coach Rich Hill hired Tyler Kincaid from nearby Palomar (Calif.) JC to be the new pitching coach, and he elevated hitting coach Jay Johnson from associate recruiting coordinator to head recruiting coordinator and top assistant. The Toreros also elevated Ramon Orozco to volunteer assistant assistant and added Nik Crouch to the staff as director of baseball operations.

Kincaid had been the pitching coach at Palomar from 2005-09. His pitching staff this spring led all California junior colleges with a 2.60 ERA, and two pitchers on the staff earned all-America honors. Before that, Kincaid served as pitching coach at San Francisco State from 2002-05. But his five summers as pitching coach for the Chatham A’s in the Cape Cod League also played a significant role in his hiring at USD. [...] Continue Reading »

Mitch Gaspard has made an impact hire in his first major move as Alabama’s head coach. Gaspard, who was promoted from assistant coach to head coach when Jim Wells retired last week, hired Kyle Bunn as the Crimson Tide’s new pitching coach Wednesday. Bunn spent the last two years at Clemson, where his pitching staff ranked fifth in the nation in ERA (3.68) in 2009. Prior to that, he spent six years at Mississippi under Mike Bianco.

“Obviously when we started this search, Kyle was our number one target from the outset,” Gaspard said. “We loved his style; he has a great mentality and a great knowledge of pitching, and his development of pitchers is obvious.

“Kyle is a dynamic recruiter. What he is going to give us is an opportunity to really go after the elite arms in the country, and he did a very impressive presentation for us, showing us how he goes about getting those top arms in the country. I know he is a relentless worker, and he’s the perfect fit for us."

A memorial service will be held Thursday at 5 p.m. CT to honor the life of Western Illinois head coach Stan Hyman, who passed away early Saturday morning at the age of 50 after battling leukemia for the past month. The public is invited to attend the service for Hyman, which will be held at WIU’s Alfred D. Boyer Stadium. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Stan Hyman Memorial Scholarship Fund, c/o Western Illinois University, 1 University Circle, 103 Western Hall, Macomb, IL 61455.

Hyman served as head coach for the Leathernecks for eight seasons. He won his 350th career game against Centenary on May 16th and has recorded some of his most proud victories over highly regarded opponents such as Long Beach State, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, Iowa, Kansas State, Michigan State, Illinois-Chicago and Oral Roberts during his tenure at Western. [...] Continue Reading »

Jim Wells, the longest tenured coach in the Southeastern Conference, has retired as the head coach at Alabama, effective today. He will be replaced by assistant coach Mitch Gaspard, who agreed to a three-year deal promoting him to head coach.

Wells took over as Alabama’s head coach when Barry Shollenberger retired in 1994. He led the Crimson Tide to three College World Series appearances in the 1990s, and the Tide has won six SEC touarnament titles in his tenure.

Wells, 54, briefly retired in the summer of 2007, then un-retired six days later. A few weeks after that, Alabama added Gaspard to its staff, hiring him away from Northwestern State, where he was the head coach. Gaspard served as an assistant under Wells at Northwestern State in 1993-94 and at Alabama from 1995-2001, and it was widely assumed that he returned to Tuscaloosa in 2007 to become the head coach-in-waiting. [...] Continue Reading »

North Florida announced today that longtime coach Dusty Rhodes will retire at the end of the 2010 season, and he will be replaced by former Louisiana State and Louisiana-Monroe coach Raymond "Smoke" Laval.

Rhodes has coached the Ospreys for all 23 years the program has existed, and he has shepherded their successful transition to Division I, which will conclude this season when they become a full-fledged D-I member for the first time. North Florida went 66-54 in Atlantic Sun Conference play over the last four seasons as a provisional member.

"Retiring’s kind of tough, because I really don’t know how it’s going to be, but i’ll find out about it," Rhodes said in a press conference, which was streamed live on the web. "But I’m 63 years old, and I’ve done a lot, and I really couldn’t have done it without the people here."

Laval, 53, has spent the last few years as a scouting adviser with the Blue Jays, but he made his reputation as a college baseball coach. [...] Continue Reading »