Coastal Carolina all in on keeping baseball program a national power

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Though many athletic programs outside the power four conferences are expected to drop off competitively when scholarship limits are removed and revenue sharing begins July 1, College World Series finalist Coastal Carolina is committed to continue playing with the big boys in baseball. Rosters will be capped at 34 in Division I baseball going forward, and first-year athletic director Chance Miller told The Associated Press all 34 at Coastal Carolina would receive full scholarships and be in line for direct rev-share payments. Miller said he also believes the Chanticleers' opportunities for name, image and likeness earnings will compare favorably with those for power conference baseball teams within two years. Baseball is Coastal Carolina's flagship sport. The Chanticleers have played in 21 NCAA Tournaments since 1991, won the 2016 CWS for their first national championship in any sport, and they'll take a 26-game win streak into the best-of-three finals against LSU starting Saturday night. Coach Kevin Schnall said the athletic administration's support "at the highest level" is a big reason the Chanticleers are back in Omaha. "What I mean by that is they enabled us to hire an elite coaching staff that would rival any coaching staff in the entire country," Schnall said. "They give us the resources to put our players in the best position to become the best players that they can be. And it's an absolute team effort." Miller said the budget has been restructured to allocate more money for scholarships without asking for additional institutional support. He said a significant portion of the revenue sharing for 2025-26 comes from donors, including a "transformational gift" from one who wished to remain anonymous. A fundraising dinner in Omaha last week brought in $1 million, he said. Coastal Carolina's baseball players are earning about $200,000 combined in third-party NIL deals this year; retired coach Gary Gilmore noted, "LSU has that much in just one guy." Miller said NIL numbers for the next year will be inflated at a lot of power four schools. That's because many NIL deals were paid up front rather than having payments spread out. Athletes and their agents wanted to avoid having to get those valued at $600-plus vetted by the NIL clearinghouse, as required after June 6 when the House settlement was approved. "We talked to one of the collectives from a power four school I know very well, and right now they're spending $2.5 million on the (baseball) team and next year they're going to spend $3 million because they frontloaded a lot of NIL money from their collective," Miller said. "The year after that, they're going to drop down to $500,000. So that's a drastic drop." Miller's charge, like his predecessor's, is to keep Coastal Carolina in the top tier of college baseball. "The mentality of our program — all the way back to Coach Gilmore's early days in the late 90s — was geared to reach Omaha," said Matt Hogue, who retired as athletic director last year to become director of Coastal Carolina's Center for Sports Broadcasting. "The way we financially invested, how we scheduled, infrastructure. We always viewed the CWS as the expectation, not a novelty." LSU coach Jay Johnson said if there's one non-power conference baseball program able to keep competing for trips to Omaha in the new era of college athletics, it's Coastal Carolina. "Gonzaga basketball, Boise State football. The ones sustainable for decades, that's who they are," he said. "This is no surprise to me we're playing them. As long as coach Schnall's there, they're not going anywhere for a long time." ___ AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports