Softball players deserve so much better from the NCAA

College softball has been wildly popular for years now, but the questions about how teams and athletes are treated — in comparison to NCAA baseball squads, especially — have reached a cacophony this season.

The NCAA is, in general, under more scrutiny than ever before as states move to allow “student-athletes” the right to capitalize off their name, image and likeness.

Also, you’ll probably recall the ludicrously inadequate”weight room” the NCAA tried to make women’s basketball players use during their tournament.

So fans — and politicians — are paying closer attention and the NCAA has responded by … passively allowing the status quo to carry on mostly unabated, of course.

Which brings us to what’s going to happen later today: Florida State, (un)fresh off winning an epic game that ended at 3:18 a.m. ET, will play Alabama at 3:30, needing to beat the Crimson Tide twice to move on to the finals.

We need change @NCAA. Love this sport & those who play it. Playing thru middle of the night to come back tomorrow & play a doubleheader on the biggest stage of their lives. It’s not right. Men’s CWS has double the amount of days with the same amount of teams. They deserve better https://t.co/1Rpb7d51Je

— Jessica Mendoza (@jessmendoza) June 6, 2021

Two quick points: Obviously the NCAA could do nothing about the rain delay that pushed Florida State’s win over Oklahoma State late into the early hours of today.

And, yes, softball pitchers tend to need less rest than baseball pitchers, which helps explain the disparity in allotted time to get these tournaments played.

Still, there has to be more space built in to accommodate situations like this. An organization that constantly pretends it values nothing more than the well-being of its athletes simply cannot allow those players to be pushed back onto a field 12 hours after finishing a game in the dead of night.

A double play sends the Seminoles to the Semifinals! #WCWS x @FSU_Softball pic.twitter.com/T7K3kRcfml

— NCAA Softball (@NCAAsoftball) June 6, 2021

This isn’t some AAU event that needs to be squeezed in before families depart for the beach. ESPN has dubbed the Women’s College World Series “the center of the softball universe” and the TV ratings are comparable to the Men’s College World Series.

Asking athletes on short rest to play today — in Oklahoma City, where temperatures will be rising toward 90 according to forecasts — is unfair to players on both teams and to the sport itself. The Women’s College World Series has been fantastic. Riveting games, unbelievable plays … everything you could want.

Rushing it along and endangering players today is utterly pointless. Most athletes don’t need to get back to class right now and the cost to expand the event by a few days is paltry when you take into account all of the NCAA’s revenues — and the fact that the NCAA itself is made up of its member institutions, which are awash in profits.

Yet the NCAA will happily tout every last dramatic moment of this event, and the schools will enjoy a marketing boost from astounding plays bouncing around social media. All while the players contend with playing at a facility where the locker rooms don’t even have showers.

It’s impossible to say how much college sports will change in the next decade or so, given that long-overdue scrutiny is pushing us toward rapid reform. To date the NCAA has pushed back on changes by claiming there’s not enough money to go around.

Of course that’s never been true. The fight is over who gets to keep most of the money. The valid complaints raised recently by those in the softball world are yet another reminder that all that revenue has done little to create equitable treatment for women athletes.