- Feb 17, 2014
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Maybe legally they can't give them away? Ohio St. being a state university means that softball is the state's property?
Just a guess?
Just a guess?
not alot of money out of the university budget but its probably a lot to the softball budget
It is about the money.
Ohio State Softball does not have nearly the funds you expect it to have just because it is a Big10 program or because it is in the same athletic department as the football team. A dozen balls cost Ohio State about $84 or $7.00/ball. Every NCAA Division I team in the country is required to use the same ball, so teams will not be afforded a discount because they wear a certain jersey. With the amount of foul balls that go out during a single game, if none were returned they are probably using 20 balls/game. They always have five readily available for the umpire, so this is assuming 15 foul balls have been hit and not returned. So each game costs about $140 for balls which comes out to about $3000/year on game balls. Because those balls are not being returned, they can never be cycled into practice, so they now have to buy new practice balls every year (as balls will break down about every six months with the amount of repetition a team like Ohio State will have). Assuming Ohio State uses ten buckets of balls for practices, that's 240 balls. Every six months. So that's about another $3500 of balls. Now we are up near $6-7000.
Ohio State softball doesn't have the huge budget you might expect them to have. You mentioned their uniform combinations, but those come for free or at a deep discount because of an athletic department wide sponsorship - the same can not be said about the balls.
Buckeye - seriously, the only $2 NCAA balls that colleges are buying are knock-off counterfeits from China that explode upon contact with a bat.
50 years ago ;0, we would chase them down and get a snow cone from ASA.