Baseball is America’s pastime, but college baseball loses its luster.

It’s nothing against the program here at NIU, it’s just that on May 9 when school ends, all the students will go home and forget all about how good or bad the team is doing.

The student body will be more concerned about their new job or internship to worry whether or not the Huskies took three of four from Central Michigan.

Now is that NIU’s fault? No. This is just one of the problems that I believe college baseball has. All spring sports have to face not being able to finish their season within the school year.

How fair is it that the baseball players stay on campus for an extra week and a half without anyone more than their own families attending their games?

Fall sports also spend extra time on campus, but that’s before the season starts. It just seems odd that the baseball team could finish the year on top of the MAC and no one would be here to share in the glory.

The best part of the season will be ignored by most, and that is a disgrace to the players who put their heart and soul into the game for months on end.

I went to Andrew High School which had a good baseball program, too. My sophomore year the team went Downstate and finished second and not many people knew about it.

So what can be done to assure that baseball and all spring sports get their time to shine?

There really isn’t much that can be done about this. Moving the season up is out of the question because the weather is still bad in April, so what happens if more games are played in February?

Playing fewer games wouldn’t work because that would require less pitching, meaning many of the second string pitchers wouldn’t get opportunities on the mound.

What about making the school year longer? Well, we all know that that wouldn’t suit the student body.

“It’s a good observation,” NIU coach Ed Mathey said. “I don’t think there’s a remedy. We can’t move the season forward any because of the weather. We can play it in the fall but that’s a big conflict with football.

“You could extend the school, but I don’t know how many happy students you’d have.”

Let’s face it, there is nothing that could be done to solve this problem. I really don’t have any complaints about the Huskie team itself. The players and new coach Mathey have been a pleasure to cover. This is not a column about what’s wrong with NIU baseball, but high school and collegiate baseball.

I know from experience that this will happen, because my first two years of covering baseball, I was more excited to come home for the summer than I was to see if NIU was going to make a late season run into the MAC Tournament.

It also doesn’t help that collegiate baseball scores don’t run on ESPN or ESPN2. That’s how a lot of students keep up with how NIU football and basketball are doing.

Baseball is a classic game that the common person enjoys. I enjoy covering all sports here at NIU, but during the summer when I’m busy with other jobs, I’d rather watch a White Sox game on television in my free time than travel a little over an hour to watch NIU compete for a title.