Baseball Coaches Continue To Adapt As Future Of College Athletics Evolves
Image credit: Florida coach Kevin O'Sullivan (Danny Parker/Four Seam Images)
Kevin O’Sullivan leaned against the dugout railing, his sharp gaze scanning the field where his players were finishing a spirited round of batting practice.
For a moment, the accomplished Gators coach who has built a perennial powerhouse in Gainesville, allowed himself to admire the work he and his staff had done to assemble a roster they believe would once again give them a shot at Omaha.
The amount of pure talent at O’Sullivan’s disposal and around the country, he said, can at times feel staggering, especially when compared with other teams he’s managed or faced, including his own 2017 national champions.
Ask him about the state of college baseball, and O’Sullivan won’t hesitate to heap praise on the NCAA. He applauds how the sport has surged into the national spotlight with record-breaking viewership, expanded media coverage and a pipeline of players who go on to rapidly reach the big leagues.
Still, though, as his mind shifted back to the players who might be the next to make that leap, his optimism about the state of the college game clouded slightly. While O’Sullivan lauds the strides the NCAA has made, he worries the same organization might be unwittingly slowing the sport’s momentum.
Behind the buzz and booming growth, he sees potential roadblocks—policies and missed opportunities that could stall the game’s evolution just as it reaches new heights.
“I do look at baseball as a sport that is growing in popularity,” O’Sullivan said. “I don’t know why they’re trying to take that away from us.”
Over the past year, the NCAA has introduced a slate of new rules that have drawn sharp criticism from some coaches, including O’Sullivan. Chief among them is a forthcoming roster adjustment. Beginning in the 2025-26 academic year, Division I programs will see their rosters trimmed from 40 players to 34, a rollback from the temporary expansion implemented to accommodate the surge of players who received an extra year of eligibility after the Covid-shortened 2020 season.
But virtually all teams in 2025 are no longer carrying players who were on rosters in 2020. The six players who lose their spots in 2026 will have to come from a group of athletes who still have remaining eligibility.
To complicate matters, coaches might be allowed to carry 38 players during the fall but will be required to cut them down to 34 by Dec. 1. It’s a mid-year adjustment that could lead to chaos, because it all but guarantees a flood of players entering the transfer portal, even though current rules stipulate that they’d be ineligible for the spring season.
At the annual American Baseball Coaches Association convention in January, Division I coaches were presented with a chart that said an average of four cuts per program would result in roughly 1,200 mid-year transfer portal entrants in a sport that currently offers no path to immediate eligibility, even for players cut by their programs at the end of fall ball.
“I don’t know where everybody else stands, but this is just me,” O’Sullivan said, choosing his words carefully, but not hiding his concern. “We have bigger issues to worry about than dropping our roster from 40 to 34. We’re spending so much time on this and it really—it’s just irrelevant in my opinion. We should be in the business of giving kids opportunities, not taking them away.”
O’Sullivan is hardly alone in his stance, as similar sentiments have taken hold across all levels of the sport.
Southern Mississippi head coach Christian Ostrander worries about incoming freshmen as rosters shrink and transfer portal talent continues to take the front stage in recruiting for so many programs.
“Opportunities are shrinking,” Ostrander said. “And who does that help?”
Echoed Mississippi State head coach Chris Lemonis:
“I think we’re taking opportunities away from kids. Our sport is different than most, and I feel like if you look around, baseball was reduced more dramatically than anybody else. There were some programs that even got more. We got more scholarships, maybe, but it’s just tough for me. I’ve been at every level of college baseball for the most part, so I understand it. It’s just disappointing.”
The looming roster-limit changes are a microcosm of the broader, large-scale shifts reshaping the entire landscape of collegiate athletics. Central to these changes is a pending $2.8 billion NCAA antitrust settlement, which has forced schools to reconsider the financial structures underpinning their athletic programs.
Under the potential settlement, schools can opt into a revenue-sharing model that will, for the first time, enable athletic departments to directly compensate student-athletes. However, baseball—despite its surging popularity—remains a tertiary player in the college sports hierarchy. And many schools may only be able to allocate limited funds, if any, to their baseball programs.
The NIL era has intensified speculation about the future of NCAA governance. With super conferences like the SEC and Big Ten flexing their financial and competitive dominance, some believe a super league is no longer a distant possibility. Such a move would be dictated almost entirely by the interests of football and men’s basketball, sports that generate the lion’s share of revenue and carry the most influence in shaping the future of college athletics. Other sports, including baseball, are left to adapt as best they can to decisions made with those larger revenue streams in mind.
“I’m concerned that if the top 60 schools break away for any reason to have their own championship, does that extend to the other sports?” Texas coach Jim Schlossnagle said. “Does the College World Series include everyone? Are there two College World Series? I don’t know.”
For baseball coaches, this reality has created a sense of being swept up in a tide they cannot control. As administrators focus their energy on navigating these new financial and organizational waters, sports like baseball are tasked with implementing rules and adjustments that reflect these larger shifts but often feel disconnected from the needs of the game itself, at least as coaches see it.
Baseball, for all its growth and excitement, remains at the mercy of forces far beyond its dugouts and diamonds. While coaches and players take pride in the game’s expanding visibility and talent pool, they also feel the strain of being somewhat of an afterthought in an evolving system increasingly driven by the revenue and television contracts of higher-profile sports.
The roster limits are not just a numbers game—they’re a stark reminder of the sport’s place in the pecking order, and a signal that baseball must fight to ensure its future remains as bright as its recent past.
“The things that can slow us down right now are the things that we have zero control over,” Schlossnagle said. “We have no control over this. It’s all going to be based on football and men’s basketball, but college baseball coaches, in my opinion, are the absolute best at adapting and surviving.
“We’ve had to adapt all the time with roster changes and minimal scholarships and the draft changes and all that stuff. Just tell us what the rules are going to be so we can go to work. That’s what gives me hope. College baseball will turn out great, we’re just in a middle-of-the-road time where we don’t quite know the direction we’re going. We’re facing a split in the road.”
