At the end of my conversation with University of Colorado athletic director Mike Bohn, I lost my head. I had promised to write a check to revive the Buffaloes’ baseball program – if I won a Powerball jackpot over $100 million.
He said we had a deal, as long as I understood that because of Title IX requirements, I also would need to provide the funding for a women’s program at my alma mater.
“It probably would be women’s lacrosse,” Bohn said, “based on the emergence of women’s lacrosse as a high school sport for women in Colorado and its popularity.”
This came up again because the Oregon State Beavers recently won their second consecutive College World Series championship in Omaha. Back-to-back national champions aren’t unprecedented, but the amazing part was that this wasn’t Arizona State, Texas, Louisiana State or any of the game’s traditional powers.
OSU hails from the Willamette Valley, where late-winter and spring rains make outdoor baseball practice an iffy daily proposition and make long, early-season road trips mandatory.
If longtime Beavers coach Pat Casey can do such a remarkable job, CU could at least have something other than a club team.
CU dropped baseball in 1980, and Colorado State did so in 1992. Northern Colorado has an independent Division I program, that has done well on the sport’s second tier, and senior catcher John Ray recently signed a contract with the San Francisco Giants organization, but nobody pretends it’s the big time. Air Force’s similar Division I program requires a congressional appointment and, realistically, isn’t an option for most Colorado prep prospects.
Reviving the sport makes the most sense for CU, which could become a magnet program for the state’s top players. (One of Oregon State’s few advantages is that Oregon dropped baseball years ago.) Many top players still would leave the state, but at least they would have another option.
Bohn had to oversee the axing of men’s tennis last year, bringing the number of programs to a bare- bones 16, and there are many financial headaches and hurdles remaining within the athletic department. But as the indefatigable AD makes the rounds, attempting to line up support for improvements that would build on the momentum generated by the imminent football indoor practice facility, it should be clear that the addition of baseball would score significant PR and goodwill points.
“It clearly would be something that would be exciting to bring back and be a part of,” Bohn said. “Right now we’re on hold until we can somehow inspire some significant gifts or people to help us put something like that together.”
He said it would take an infusion of “around $5 million” to get a program going, “plus probably another $2.5 million to build (a stadium) that would project the kind of stature and commitment to the program that would be required.”
Former CU All-America football player and catcher John Stearns offered to line up endowment-type funding for the program and to be its first coach at one point, but that didn’t fly. Yet as Bohn enters his third year on the job, it’s interesting that he can toss out a dollar figure and has thought about it enough to know what women’s sports he would recommend adding. He repeatedly emphasized he didn’t want to give anyone “false hope,” and he was talking about this only because I brought it up, not because he is campaigning.
I’m the first to admit that some talk about CU’s baseball tradition has been laughably romanticized. Playing on the isolated East Campus, the Buffs generally didn’t draw well. Or draw at all. Besides, pinpointing blame or debating whether the sport should have been dropped in the first place is wasted effort now. What matters is that resuming baseball – as long as it’s done right, with full-scale funding and facilities to give the program a chance to be competitive in the Big 12 – would be good for the state and good for the school.
A new stadium would have to be built on the main campus, where students leaving classes can stumble onto a game. It also would help if Bohn and the university administration get the sense that Buffaloes baseball would draw significant public support and not the sparse crowds of the bygone era.
Now I need to go check my Powerball ticket.
Staff writer Terry Frei can be reached at 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
