By Will Kimmey
May 18, 2005

Nebraska and Texas played a nationally televised game on ESPN on April 10 that was trimmed to eight innings so Texas could make its flight out of Omaha that evening. That's a common practice in large conferences in which teams are spread far enough apart to necessitate air travel.

Conferences set time curfews, which forbid another inning from beginning past a predetermined time, to allow visiting teams to make flights home on time so that student-athletes won't miss Monday classes.

The NCAA baseball rules committee announced April 12 that games that do not reach the full nine innings--such as this 7-6 Texas victory--would not count, beginning April 18.

"That was the straw that broke the camel's back in our perspective," said Chris McKnight, rules committee chairman and coach and assistant athletics director at Division III Frostburg State.

"We got plenty of email feedback on that one, mostly from Division II and III coaches who said if that game counts for eight innings, why can't ours?"

Those coaches were upset because the NCAA was looking into the validity of hundreds of seven-inning games in early season tournaments at the Division II and III levels. The rules committee decided to uphold those games because it determined the schools didn't knowingly violate the NCAA rule defining a regulation game as nine innings in length and because that action would have wiped out large chunks of team records and individual statistics.

The seven-inning contests violated the NCAA rule defining a standard game as nine innings; it allows for seven-inning games to be played only in doubleheaders (defined as games 30 minutes apart between the same two opponents) and when conference rules allow for 10-run mercy provisions.

A seemingly unintended consequence of this blanket rule enforcement has come to light in recent conference games in which a Sunday travel curfew was in affect.

"I think people think of course we would do that, because it's to get the kids back on campus, which is good, but that's not a regulation rule in a nine-inning game," said Ty Halpin, the NCAA staff liaison to the rules committee.

Charles Bloom, Southeastern Conference assistant commissioner, instructed his teams to move up Sunday start times and push back the curfew time. He also said the league would count results and statistics toward conference records and would petition the NCAA to honor them when selecting teams for the NCAA tournament.

"We thought that it was an academic issue for us in terms of leaving on a Sunday night," Bloom said. "It was kind of tough at first thinking we could lose a game because we’re trying to get kids in class on Monday morning . . .

"We intend to play nine innings every game. I might be overstepping my bounds here, but I think they are not targeting the SEC with this policy, that they weren’t thinking the travel curfew is what they were after. After talking to people, it seems they were more after teams scheduling those seven-inning games."

Arkansas moved up the start time of its Sunday game at Alabama to 11 a.m. and also agreed to head to the airport without showering if extra time was needed. Arkansas won the 3-2 game in 2 hours, 50 minutes, so that extreme wasn't necessary.

"We have to address the issue of class time and travel," said Tennessee coach Rod Delmonico, a member of the rules committee. His club moved up its Sunday game at Louisiana State to a 10:30 a.m. start to make sure it got in all nine innings. "It's a little more difficult now after 9-11, you don’t have as many flights going in and out. And we don’t want to miss class. The cost factor is secondary to class time.

"I don’t know if there's a clear-cut answer. I don’t know what you do. There are other things that factor in; if you start the game and get rain, there's nothing you can do. I don’t have the answers right now. Let's address that issue and not run a blanket cover where if you play a seven-inning game and rain and travel time affects you--we should look at that."

Delmonico and the rest of the committee will address the issue this July. It wouldn't be an upset if games scheduled for nine innings that get shortened because of curfew restrictions end up getting counted as complete contests for the 2006 season.

"I agree; I think there's some merit to that and that's why the conferences have the rule in place," Halpin said. "Our Division II and Division III schools that are bussing back, they would probably prefer to stop the game at 7 o'clock and go home, because a four-hour bus ride is a little bit harder than a two-hour plane trip.

"There's got to be some equity there, if one conference has a rule that says no inning can start after 3 p.m., then every league ought to have that right."