WholeHogSports
HOG CALLS : MSU’s Polk always fought the good fight
Posted on Sunday, May 18, 2008
URL: http://www.wholehogsports.com/nwat/65314/
STARKVILLE, Miss. — Perhaps today some smug, corporate dweebs might loosen their neckties, raise glasses of white wine and toast that Ron Polk no longer can out them as an active coach.
The 29-year Mississippi State Bulldogs coach and also former Georgia Bulldogs coach, retired from coaching college baseball after MSU’s season reached its conclusion against Arkansas in Saturday’s finish of a three-game SEC series in Starkville.
No doubt the NCAA couldn’t be happier. They won’t have to fret Polk’s scathing criticism the next time they reduce baseball scholarships and opportunities.
“ The NCAA, ” Polk said in last Wednesday’s SEC teleconference, “ is the enemy of college baseball, the enemy to kids, coaches and programs. They have made every effort to hurt us. ”
“ Nerds, ” he once called the NCAA brass governing college athletics.
And he’s so right. “ Revenge of the Nerds ” seems the mission of the pointy-headed academia, bean-counters and marketing whiz kids now controlling the college game.
Polk fears for college baseball, reduced to 11. 7 scholarships though starting a game using 10 players with the designated hitter.
Reduced scholarship opportunities are just part of Polk’s litany of complaints.
What sounds like a worthy goal of gender equity for college athletics instead has become a cost-cutting excuse to slash men’s spring sports (sports other than revenue producers football and basketball ) to the bone and in some cases lop them off altogether.
It drove him out of coaching for a while.
“ In 1997, I retired after coming back from Omaha [coaching the Bulldogs at the College World Series ] the next day, ” Polk said. “ I was so fed up with the NCAA and what they were doing to our kids, coaches and programs — I knew three or four weeks before that I needed to get out and give it to [then Mississippi State assistant ] Pat McMahon. ”
Polk couldn’t stay away. He loves coaching. So he coached at Georgia and returned to Mississippi State when McMahon moved to Florida.
Now he’s had it again — dismayed with the SEC he so helped become THE league of college baseball.
“ We just lost another vote to the NCAA Board of Directors, ” Polk said. “ The Southeastern Conference sponsored an amendment that is so illogical, that walk-ons in baseball, if they are to transfer have to sit out a year. We are trying to get the SEC not to have to sit out a year. ”
Full-scholarship sports like football and men’s and women’s basketball make everyone redshirt transferring from one D-1 school to another.
But why, Polk told an Arkansas writer using a situation he presumes has beset Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn, should a partial scholarship sport penalize a walk-on just wanting a chance to play ?
“ A kid on Dave Van Horn’s team is a walk-on and not getting a chance to play, ” Polk said. “ He has a chance to go to Arkansas-Little Rock, he has to sit out a year. ”
Polk talked of “ a lot” of those who started with him as grad assistant coaches who have become successful head coaches.
“ Unfortunately our great friends at the NCAA took graduate assistants away from college baseball and gave one to a very, very, good solid sport — women’s crew, ” Polk said.
Common sense easily gauges which of those two sports has more demands for a grad assistant coach, but quotas and hypocrisy rule the day with the NCAA.
This organization yaps constantly about studentathletes yet seems to care way more about graduation rates than those graduating. And it proudly advertises most of its athletes “ will be turning pro in something other than sports” yet legislated with the NBA to mandate a year’s service from freshman basketball phenoms who otherwise would directly turn pro out of high school.
That’s exactly what most of those phenoms do after their obligatory year upping their “ alma mater’s” jersey sales.
What would you expect from an organization that has reduced scholarship opportunities for minorities in sports like baseball yet goes on a political correctness warpath versus schools with Indian nicknames ?
Who is going to fight them with the increasingly pressurized, transitory nature of coaching limiting clout just to wins and losses combined with the prevailing national trend to hire anonymous administrators instead of coaching icons as athletic directors ?
“ We just don’t have enough people interested in attacking, ” Polk said. “ But you’ve got to attack these people because if you don’t, they’ll eat you alive. ”
Too bad for kids, coaches and their sport they lose one who tenaciously fought back. It’s not just coaching Mississippi State and Georgia that made Ron Polk the ultimate Bulldog.
Nate Allen covers University of Arkansas athletics for the Northwest Arkansas Times.