[Splitter24]

I'll weigh in on a couple of points.

1) I played for two different D1 programs in the early 90's that were on completely opposite ends of the budget spectrum. For one of my teams, I am at least 90% certain that they paid for very little, if not nothing, for bats. We would get a big shipment from Easton each year with whatever the hot bat was that they put out in a few various lengths. At that time, Easton's Black Magic was the flavor. I'm sure that Easton wanted to make certain all of the higher profile programs had nothing but their bats being waived around.

2) My other program (and I use that term loosely) had almost no budget for baseball (that could almost be another thread by itself). Everybody had their own gamers. They were one of the exceptions at that level. But most lower level schools define what aluminum bats were intended for: a durability/cost measure.

3) College scores really started getting out of hand after my time when they started introducing titanium alloy and graphite bats. All the bats we used were almost all -3's (Length in inches minus weight in ounces). The newer generation bats started showing up as -7s to -10s. Same shaped bat, same coverage... 33% lighter. Then about 10 years ago, they passed some rules to require certified bats to have the same exit velocity properties as wood, which helped some.

4) I know that for a while (assuming they still do, not sure), the NE-10 (D2 conference) had inter-conference games with wood bats. I'm assuming the schools picked up the bill on some bats, but again not sure on that.