Hilltoppers, Hot Rods to announce…something…

Today, I got a mysterious e-mail from WKU baseball Sports Information Director Jeremy Brown with the headline “WKU Baseball and BG Hot Rods to Announce Expanded Baseball Partnership.”

The announcement will come next Wednesday at 11 a.m., and will involve Hilltoppers baseball coach Matt Myers, as well as Hot Rods GM Adam Nurse, who will speak on the expanded partnership. It sounds exciting, it sounds like a potentially monumental thing between a college and pro team, but there’s still one question I have regarding all of this…

Just what exactly is this partnership?

The Hot Rods are under the umbrella of the Tampa Bay Rays, so it’s not like they can necessarily promise anyone who wants to go to the next level a spot on the roster. Maybe if the Hot Rods were a summer league team, that could definitely be the case. But they aren’t, so it can’t be (can it?).

I’ve always thought for years that it would be awesome to have some sort of preseason exhibition game, or heck let’s make it a series, between the two clubs, but surely that’s against some NCAA rule, right?

Come to think of it, it seems like any sort of “expanded partnership,” between any college school and any pro team would be seen (in the eyes of the NCAA) as a drastic violation of something.

Anyway, this is what we know:

The Hot Rods and Hilltoppers baseball program are announcing some sort of expanded baseball partnership one week from today. Let the discussion over what in the world it could possibly be, begin.