Not all college baseball news this time of year revolves around signings and summer league results. Last week we wrote about meetings of the Rules Committee, Baseball Issues Committee and a subcommittee of the Academic Enhancement Working Group. The Division I Baseball Committee also met last week, and this week I caught up with NCAA managing director for baseball and football Dennis Poppe to get the scoop on the committee’s doings. Here are some tidbits:

• Tim Weiser, the deputy commissioner of the Big Ten Conference and former athletics director at Kansas State, has been recommended to replace outgoing committee chairman Larry Templeton, and Poppe said he’s confident Weiser will be approved as the new chairman. This is good news for the sport, because Weiser is a good baseball man who played baseball himself at Emporia State (N.Y.).
   
• Poppe said the committee is thoroughly reviewing its entire NCAA tournament selection process, and particularly its "Nitty Gritty" Ratings Percentage Index report. Currently, the report only contains a team’s RPI rank, but Poppe said those rankings can be misleading because oftentimes teams are only separated by miniscule margins. So the committee has asked its IT department to look into adding the actual four-decimal raw RPI figure in addition to the ranks. They’re also considering organizing the rankings by tiers, so teams that have scores that are close together would be grouped accordingly.

  But don’t expect a major overhaul of the selection process. Poppe defended the RPI’s utility as one selection tool, even though Fresno State won the national title after ranking 89th in the RPI and earning a No. 4 regional seed.

  "It’s not the only tool we use," Poppe said. "If you think of what you learn from situations like that, that’s all the more reason the RPI should not be an absolute. (Fresno State) underachieved during the year–they were a good baseball team. But they numbers were the numbers–they produced those numbers during the season. I use it as a reminder; the RPI helps, but that’s where it’s invaluable to have the input from the advisory committees."
   

• The new stretched-out College World Series format is here to stay. Poppe said the committee was very pleased with the format, and so was ESPN.

  "In their case, it was a ratings bonanza," Poppe said. "It was the second-highest rating ever for a championship game, up 27 percent from last year. There are so many factors to address (with the format)–first and foremost the players and teams, and you did have more rest time between games. Traditionally you used to have one team come back and play the next day, and the other team got a day off, so there were some inequities there. So you’ve got the student athlete welfare issue, the equity issue, fan interest and media interest. When you adjust here, sometimes it affects other areas. We addressed two this year (with the stretched-out format): media and players, but it did create a longer time for fans to be there. It is a concern, but I think it just takes some adjustments. We’re adjusting, and I think everyone else needs to adjust too."