Fall baseball, anyone? Kingston's Gamecocks can now play games during football season

Changes are coming for college baseball, and Mark Kingston is on board for one but hesitant about another.

The NCAA Division I Council approved the sweeping rule changes this past Wednesday, significantly altering both the recruiting calendar and offseason practices. On Thursday, the South Carolina baseball coach weighed in on both.

The first rule change, the one Kingston is pleased with, will take effect in the fall of 2018, allowing teams to schedule two exhibition games against other programs without the contests counting against the 56-game limit imposed by the NCAA.

Kingston declined to say Thursday who South Carolina might play in these new exhibitions, but he offered a few hints.

"We do (have an idea of who USC will play), we'll probably keep them under wraps for now because it's such a new rule," Kingston said. "I feel like you can get creative with it. There's a lot of things that can be on the table with who we play. Maybe you play some opponents that people will really get excited about, maybe you go low-key. Everything at this point will be on the table with those two fall games, but I think there's some opportunities for some pretty fun things for fans and players."

According to D1Baseball, there is no mileage limit on how far teams can travel for those fall games, though multiple people have suggested rivals South Carolina and Clemson square off.

The second change, the one Kingston was less than pleased with, restructures the recruiting calendar. Previously, there was no limit on how early recruits could take unofficial visits and meet with college coaches, but they could only begin to take official visits on Sept. 1 of their senior year.

Under the new rules, official visits can take place beginning Sept. 1 of a recruit’s junior season, but unofficial visits in which the coaching staff is involved will be limited to that date as well.

“They delayed when freshmen and sophomores can come on campus and start meeting with coaches. They did not change the phone call rule, so they still are allowed to call us early in their careers, but they cannot visit, meet with coaches now until their junior years, Sept. 1,” Kingston said.

“So I don't know that they fixed a whole lot of the problems that we have with the early recruiting, because now there's still going to be some kids as freshmen and sophomores wanting to commit to schools without maybe even meeting the coaches face to face. So I think that component, the recruiting part, is still a work in progress.”

This story was originally published April 20, 2018 at 1:34 PM with the headline "Fall baseball, anyone? Kingston's Gamecocks can now play games during football season."