As one coach sounds a college baseball alarm, can Vanderbilt and Tennessee keep pace? | Estes

Louisville’s Dan McDonnell is one of the best college baseball coaches in the country, and he’s paid that way. Tends to happen when you reach the College World Series five times.

This season, however, his Cardinals fell short of the ACC Tournament. They won’t make the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three years, and McDonnell is being mentioned for job openings, most notably Alabama's.

Asked about those rumbles after Saturday’s season finale, McDonnell threw a curveball – at the noggins of his own administration. He questioned his university’s commitment to baseball. He criticized the lack of facility upgrades. He essentially threatened to leave Louisville after 17 seasons. And he did it publicly.

"We want to be here. We love it here,” said McDonnell, according to WDRB-TV in Louisville. “But again, I want to work for people and be with people and a group that want to win as well. Don't tell me you want to win. Show me you want to win. … Are you interested or are you committed? I want to be at a place that's committed."

Considering the source, it's a wider warning.

Because Louisville is a big-time baseball program.

Such a strong stance about a lack of support from McDonnell represents a canary in the coal mine for other big-time college baseball programs arriving at an NIL future while still a secondary sport on most of their campuses.

Haves and have-nots

Question: If Louisville isn’t committed, then who is?

Answer: Vanderbilt baseball, for one. Tennessee baseball, for another.

Our state’s SEC programs would be considered the haves, as opposed to baseball's many have-nots. That's both preference and survival. Most of the haves are in the SEC.

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Tim Corbin has a long track record of success to validate Vanderbilt’s commitment. He has won titles and set a standard that the Vols – under Tony Vitello – are beginning to invest in to catch up. A significant facelift is in the works for Lindsey Nelson Stadium.

UT has become serious about baseball, much as Vanderbilt has been over the years. These programs are at the forefront.

The thing is, Louisville has been, too.

I don’t pretend to know details of what’s rankling McDonnell, though I’d suspect it has to do with plans for a new indoor facility that U of L has announced and not built.

That said, Louisville’s existing headquarters is nice. I’ve been there. The Cards don’t want for much.

Plus, in 2019, the Courier-Journal reported that McDonnell received a rolling contract that was set to pay him around $1.5 million by 2028. Who else makes at least that much in college baseball? It’s a very short list. As of last summer, per D1Baseball.com, it had only three names: Corbin, Ole Miss’ Mike Bianco and Vitello. Texas A&M's Jim Schlossnagle also recently joined the list.

But looking into the crystal ball, advantages in all college sports will be less about facilities and salaries and more about NIL money on hand to lure and retain top players.

Baseball tends to be viewed as an outlier in the NIL sphere, separate from football and men's basketball. But it's already a factor in baseball, too.

"There is a reason why certain people show up in certain places, and I don’t think that would happen without money," Corbin told The Athletic in a February survey of coaches on NIL. "Money is the attractor. Teams, yeah, but guys getting into this league from other places, there has to be a reason, a motivating cause. I’d say it’s very much a factor."

In recruiting and with the transfer portal, NIL's impact will only accelerate. And those who have proven willing to spend lavishly on baseball are only going to be asked to keep doing more, with perhaps less available.

Who’s paying for all this?

The list of haves is bound to dwindle in college baseball. There’s no other way.

College sports are undergoing a seismic transition too quickly.

As outside NIL collectives siphon donations that previously would have gone toward facilities and salaries at high-major schools, it’ll steer funds instead into the pockets of athletes and their families. That's not a bad thing. It's just changing the game drastically, and the NCAA isn't close to having a handle on how.

The great facilities race in college athletics, which was to impress recruits anyway, grows outdated quickly when replaced by bidding wars. It's not supposed to work that way, but it does.

For now, NIL presents a world without rules.

And without rules, the biggest and strongest eat first.

Football is going to eat first. It will surely receive the bulk of NIL donations to most collectives, as well as administrative priority in a smaller administrative pool for facilities and salaries. Men’s and women’s basketball will get theirs, too, depending on the school.

Once you get to baseball, what’ll be left to compete for top recruits or transfers?

Some schools will make do and set the pace. Some won't have the means to keep up. And I don't think we know yet which is which in baseball. NIL remains a hushed topic, even if it's legal.

This is a sport, after all, that has long been accustomed to many players having to pay their own way to school.

"We have always been so restricted with money," Louisville's McDonnell told The Athletic in that February survey. "Now that we have this NIL, it’s like one school has 11.7 scholarships, but if another school has a half million or a million in NIL, how is that parity? ... Five years from now, we might (be) going, 'How do you compete with that?'"

And so I go back to McDonnell's words on Saturday. He didn't reference NIL, but "show me you want to win," can mean a lot of things. When a big fish in college baseball – someone who makes seven figures as one of the sport’s highest-paid coaches – voices concern about becoming a minnow because of a lack of financial support, the other sharks would do well to pay attention.

The cost to get to Omaha in June appears to be going up, which seems unnerving when it's unclear who'll step up to pay to get there.

Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on Twitter @Gentry_Estes.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee baseball, Vanderbilt should heed Louisville coach's warning