re: for the old-timers - the end of the Jim Smith era

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Jimbo Smith was the football equipment manager. Being baseball coach was a part-time job if he had time to do it.
Baseball was definitely not a priority back in the time to Jimbo Smith was head coach.

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True that. Baseball was a non-revenue sport to the Athletic Dept. and was treated as such. But with the exception of a few programs (like USCw), few schools invested in their baseball programs in those days.

Then ESPN came along and that changed everything. Because 99% of the college football and basketball games were covered by the traditional networks at the time, baseball was the only opportunity for ESPN to get college sports on their schedule. And they struck gold... One word: Omaha. The rest is history.

One humorous incident about Lamabe. He was extremely laid back, even by baseball coach standards, and almost never came out of the dugout. Too much effort. But we were playing Navy one time and the Navy pitcher dropped the ball in the middle of his wind-up. Just dropped it right on top of the mound and it slowly rolled to the grass.

The umpire just waved it off and yelled "No pitch!" That woke up the crowd and Lamabe. ("What did he say? 'No pitch'...?") Lamabe strolls out to home plate to remind the ump that once the pitcher flinches into his wind-up, it's either a ball, strike or balk. The ump realized his mistake and started walking away from Lamabe, around and around and around the plate. He was too embarrassed to talk to him. (He was a very young ump.) Finally, the third base ump came up and stopped the circus. The ump then yelled "Ball". and the crowd (<100) gave him a standing ovation.

Shortly afterwards we got a new AD by the name of Broadhead and he knew all about TV revenue. He came from Miami where there was an assistant coach that was very frustrated by the lack of opportunity to move up....