Clip And Mail (please!)

Ron Polk, Baseball Coach
Mississippi State University
Mississippi State, MS 39762

Dear Ron:
Hey, bag the letters! O.K., so you didn't like it when the NCAA put limits on Division I baseball, cutting the maximum number of games in a season from 70 to 56, reducing the number of coaches a school can have and curtailing practice time. But this letter-writing campaign of yours is nutso. Here at SI we've received 1,200 letters from coaches, players and boosters knocking the new rules. We're told that other media types have also been swamped, as have members of the Presidents Commission, which pushed through the cuts at the 1991 NCAA convention. When NCAA president Dick Schultz was about to go on Larry King's radio show, King pointed to a box stuffed with mail and pleaded. "That's from college baseball coaches—could you tell them to stop?" Schultz thought. You should see the letters I'm getting!

Recently you wrote, ah, yes, a letter to The NCAA News: "Where is equity when college baseball staffs have just two full-time coaches but women basketball start's have three?...I must assume that if college baseball players wore skirts, they would be treated with more respect and equity."

Bad move, Ron. Word is, you're hoping to get the baseball cutbacks rescinded at the January NCAA convention in Dallas, but insulting an entire gender isn't the way to win sympathy. Neither is burying people under a ton of mail.
Yours truly, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

P.S. Do you honestly think women's sports get a fairer shake than men's? For sure, the women don't have your postage budget.