BACK TO SCHOOL
The NCAA’s unprecedented decision last March to cancel the College World Series and all other winter and spring sports championships due to the coronavirus pandemic cut short the seasons for athletes around the country.
That decision soon led to a question of whether spring sports athletes should receive an extra year of eligibility to account for what amounted to a lost season. Baseball teams had completed only about a quarter of their regular season, after all. In a normal year, a player who suffered a season-ending injury at the same point would be eligible for a medical redshirt, giving them that season of eligibility back.
After some debate, all three divisions of the NCAA, as well as the National Junior College Athletic Association and NAIA voted to grant eligibility relief to all spring sports athletes—effectively giving every baseball player on a college roster in 2020 an extra year of eligibility.
Those decisions meant that seniors, whose careers would have otherwise ended with last spring’s cancelations could return to college baseball in 2021. Those seniors didn’t have an easy choice to make, however. It was late March by the time all the collegiate bodies had ruled to offer the option for players to return. Some had jobs
