Week 11 Victory Field

From Muncie Star Sports main page today:

“Baseball is one of those sports, it’s ‘America’s Pastime’ as they say,” Ball State athletic director Mark Sandy hummed. “People aren’t cutting that sport very often.”

Thing is, college sports are kind of a mess right now. Power 5 conferences (Big Ten, Big 12, Atlantic Coast, Pac-12, Southeastern) are generating more and more money through television deals while the Group of 5 (MAC, Mountain West, USA, American Athletic, Sun Belt) lags behind. Sandy said the gap has always been there, but there is more pressure to keep up than ever before.

After UB cuts four teams, it will have 16 — the minimum required to compete at the Division I level. In a statement, Buffalo President Satish K. Tripathi said the decision was made with “extensive deliberation,” but continued to say, “the unfortunate reality is that we no longer have the resources to support 20 competitive Division I athletic teams.”

“All of us, probably, in the Group of 5 are saying, ‘Boy, 19, 20 sports,’” Sandy said. “If it was 12, would other schools drop more sports?”

Look around the country and you’ll see Missouri State cutting its field hockey team. Northern Illinois, also of the MAC, putting its football team through the ringer just to stay afloat with guarantee money. Baseball programs shutting down. It’s a tough climate to grow in right now, and Maloney knows that.

“I feel really bad for all those (Buffalo) student-athletes and coaches, but we’re in the Mid-American Conference where you don’t have the big television contracts like the Power 5 does,” he said. “So those are tough decisions.”

But somehow, the decisions at his recently renovated ball park are pretty easy.

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What Sandy says about baseball, “We are certainly trying to be the best in the MAC and go from there,” is no different than what he’d say about every Cardinals team. Of course he wants to be the best in the league. But here’s the thing, Ball State really means it with baseball.

With a base salary of $206,876, Maloney holds one of the league’s richest contracts. Even when he worked in the Big Ten at Michigan, Maloney earned just $190,000. For context, Eastern Michigan’s Mark Van Ameyde earned $75,000 in 2013.

It looked like Maloney might leave for Indiana University back in 2014, so former athletic director Bill Scholl gave him real reason to stay. He offered him a pay raise, then helped him lay out a vision.

“It was very, very close,” Maloney said of leaving to coach the Hoosiers. “We made a commitment to Ball State and Ball State made a commitment to us. This has been a good place for our family (Maloney’s son, Alex, plays for the Cardinals), and I wouldn’t have come back if I didn’t love this place.”

Maloney’s salary has increased by 65 percent since 2013, when he returned to Ball State after a 10-year stint with the Wolverines. His 732-481-1 record makes for a strong resume, but he’s doing a lot of work on the side too.

He’s been recruiting under-the-radar players like Alex Call, who went to the Chicago White Sox last year in Round No. 3 of the MLB Draft. He’s been plucking guys like Marnon, who can now throw consistently between 88 and 90 miles per hour — nearly10 faster than he did in high school.

And he helped raise money for improvements at First Merchants Ballpark Complex, which is also among the MAC’s best facilities.

“It went from being an eye sore to something I think everyone in the community can be proud of,” Maloney said. “Over the last four years, we’ve really done a lot of good things.”

Though Kent State — which made it to the College World Series in 2012 — Miami of Ohio and Central Michigan are also investing in baseball, Ball State is in legitimate position to win the league year-in and year-out. The same can’t be said about major sports like football and basketball.

“We’re not only committed to baseball, we want to win the conference,” Sandy said, “do like Coastal Carolina and then win the (College) World Series.”

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Ball State has knocked off a nationally ranked team in each of the last five years. Last season, Marnon got the win when Ball State knocked off No. 6 LSU, 7-1. Maloney puts his team through a very challenging nonconference schedule with hopes of eventually playing those teams in the postseason.

Senior pitcher BJ Butler, part of Maloney’s first recruiting class four years ago, has seen this thing grow. He’s seen Maloney’s vision come to fruition.

“He knew in his mind where he wanted the program to be and where he wanted it to go,” he said. “You could tell it wasn’t just lip service. You could tell he was actually going to do it. He obviously has. ...

“It’s not as common among teams in the conference where you expect to win and go play teams like Coastal Carolina, Maryland and Oregon State and all the top-ranked teams that we play and beat some of those teams. It’s special.”

There are some questions brewing now about the future of college baseball. As smaller programs are cut to help keep athletic departments afloat, more television money looks to be on the way for the Power 5.

But Maloney is hopeful that his Cardinals can hang tight and use this momentum to break through, even as other programs break down.

“We’re dreaming, that someday, we can have that season where we’re the mid-major that really makes all the noise,” Maloney said.

“Baseball is one of the sports where you have a shot to do that if it all falls right.”