Times are changing in sports world

The days when most of a coach's job was on the field are giving way. Penn baseball coach Bob Seddon walked to the mound on Bower Field on a hot Sunday morning for the first game of a doubleheader with Harvard. He would have liked to have concentrated his thoughts on who was playing shortstop that day and who would bat cleanup, if only he could forget about trying to find parking spaces for the umpires and visiting team, putting water and chairs in the visiting dugout, and making sure his third baseman filled out his NCAA time sheet after finishing his weight training and film session . The nature of college sports today has coaches wondering where their lineup cards are. Between the stack of NCAA forms they have to fill out or under the pile of custom-made recruiting letters with the expensive red and blue letterhead? "Coaching is the smallest part of the job today," said Seddon. "There's just so many things to do beside it." Seddon finds himself in the familiar position of many NCAA coaches these days -- at the tail end of a locker room full of sports trends that have been slowly changing the face of athletics since the 1950s. Seddon remembers the days when he could drive to North Jersey to watch a big-time high school prospect like Doug Glanville hit and not have to shuffle for elbow room among the crowds of coaches trying to get a look at the kid's swing. "There's more recruiting than ever before in baseball," said Seddon, the Quakers coach since 1971. "You have to work harder because there's a lot more people out there going for it." Seddon would eventually land Glanville, and the kid no one wanted to scout plays leftfield for the Chicago Cubs these days. Asked if he could get a big-timer like Glanville today, Seddon replies like a coach who has seen the days of being the lone college coach in the stands come and go. "We were very fortunate to get Doug, but today? very difficult," he said. Recruiting has become much more of a science, according to Penn Senior Associate Athletic Director Carolyn Schlie Femovich, one of the administrators charged with handling the technical aspects of the sport that have arisen since Seddon arrived on campus in a quarter-century ago. "Coaches have carefully planned strategies," she said. "They're salespeople now, and the job requires more and more that you can sell yourself and the school." Seddon, who was already serving as the Penn men's soccer team, took the baseball coaching position in 1971. But in 1986, he relinquished his soccer duties due to the increasing demands of intercollegiate sports. "You could do it, and the day might come again because of budget reasons, but it would be so much more difficult," Seddon said. He also left soccer because of the growing length of the baseball season. "Fall baseball was never a factor in those days. But if you want to compete on our level, players have to play throughout the summer and all fall," said Seddon, who recalled the playful days of fall workouts in the past when he would try out a few hopefuls and call it a day. The former three-sport athlete at Springfield (Mass.) College has noticed a shift he has seen in the number of sports played by students. Parents have taught their children to play only one sport, excelling at it like gymnasts and figure skaters who concentrate on the high bars or triple sowcows that will bring gold medals down the road. The days of Brad Heinz, the tough-nosed catcher and linebacker who captained both the Penn baseball and football teams in 1984, are almost gone, according to Seddon. The days of Mike O'Connor, who played both baseball and soccer in 1976, have faded to the health conscious athletes who must weight train in the off-season in order to compete. Athletes like Glen Ambrosius, Penn's starting third baseman who will also suit up for the football team, are now the exception and not the rule. "Players weren't fit back then. Americans tried with soccer to follow European trends of year-long training, and it trickled down to college and then high school," Seddon said. The longer season has made the job of coaches like Seddon far more time consuming, as the NCAA rules that accompany large-scale athletics have brought piles of forms and paperwork to their desks. Everything must be documented down to the hours and minutes spent in team meetings. "Some of the big guys in the factory schools cheated and everyone has to pay for it," Seddon said. "The NCAA has to come down across the board." The NCAA is, however, a rule-enforcer and not a rule-maker. According to Femovich, coaches outdo each other in coming up with rules intended to make sure everyone is playing on the same field. And then there is the actual interest in the game that has changed along with the transformation of the big leagues into big business. "I don't know if players watch a lot of baseball today. I don't know if the interest is what it used to be," he said. Femovich points to the business aspects that drive the rising tide of technicalities overflowing collegiate athletics today. "Budgets, accountability for budgets, expense-side and revenue methods" have become more and more a part of collegiate sports, according to Femovich. Seddon, as part of another era, will still coach a doubleheader and then head off as a fan to another game. And somewhere, some ump pulls out of his parking spot, a player fills out a time sheet, and Bob Seddon buys a hot dog and roots for the home team.