Hello to everyone

[Bama Baseball 1]

I have a couple of questions.

1. Does anyone know if Allen Rice is still with the program, or has he moved on. If he did do you know who will be replacing him?

2. I heard that Barry Allen had said the start of the season was being moved back next year by the NCAA. I cannot find anything about this on the internet on the NCAA web site.

 

[catfish45]

Allen Rice went to Radford with Joe Riccuia as his assistant.

Yes the changes are going into affect next year as far as games beginning March 1st.

:BigA:

 

[Bama Baseball 1]

Thanks for the information. It is amazing how hard it is to find out what is going on with the program. I have been a season ticket holder for over 5 years, it is strange that Baseball is treated the way it is. I have been at all but about 10 home games in that time period, and even when we had an excellent team, there was very little hipe around town. If the football team was playing well, they would get half of the sports section in the Tuscaloosa News. Not to mention they would be televised every game. Baseball can't even get on FM radio! Lots of people want to say that we need to play better to get new facilities, but how do you get the players to do that, when you get little to no respect in Tuscaloosa! It is time for everyone to get behind Baseball like they do Football, Gymnastics, and Basketball. Then lets see what happens!

 

[crimsonkelly]

first of all, welcome aboard.

From what I can tell in all my baseball experience, going on 25 about years, baseball really gets no excitement anywhere unless you are in a baseball town. Everyone likes to see exciting football and basketball game or some other "action sport". Baseball is pretty much a mental game and from what I know of being a teacher in a middle school, we don't have a lot of mental giants running around anymore, so the "mental" game kinda gets put on the back burner. When was the last time you read headlines of a pitcher doing something phenominal like Brandon Webb's 33 straight scoreless inning streak (currently going on by the way). This is the equivalent of football team having like 4 or 5 straight shutouts. If that happened in football that defense would be considered legenday.

In a nut shell.... as JoJo's signature says...baseball is dull only to dull minds.

RTR (and to think, I'm one fo the more positive people on here )

:BigA:

 

[bamadoc94]

One reason for the lack of hype in my opinion lies in the marketing arm of the athletic department. While I am a purist who enjoys the game on its merits alone, it takes more than that to sell baseball tickets. Since football tickets sell themselves at UA, there has never been any real urgency to improve in that area. One look at the Tide Gymnastics program should tell you that Tide fans will turn out to see a winner. And the baseball program has had its successes, so there is no excuse for there not being a bigger "buzz" about baseball. This is another example of an athletic department that is behind the times and has a lot of catching up to do.

 

[crimsonkelly]

Well, not being from any where near Tuscaloosa or living there, from what I can tell, Bamadoc may have hit the nail directly on the head. Nice job Bamadoc

RTR

:BigA:

 

[TideHead]

Yes the changes are going into affect next year as far as games beginning March 1st.

:BigA:

The March 1st uniform start date got slightly pushed back. LSU has released their schedule, and their first game is February 22. So, we will be starting a little later but not quite as late as originally thought.

LSU 2008 Schedule: http://www.lsusports.net/SportSelect.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=5200&KEY=&SPID=2173&SPSID=27866

 

[BAMA FANatic]

Catfish, your reply made it sound like Allen was going to be the head coach. Joe Raccuia is head coach, and Allen is going to be an assistant.

RTR