CORVALLIS — Roughly an hour after watching the Oregon State gymnastics team compete at the NCAA championships in Texas, Scott Barnes became the target of a social media firestorm.

Kendall Rogers, a national writer for D1Baseball, posted on Twitter last Friday evening that Oregon State’s vice president and athletic director had voted no on legislation that would have added a third paid assistant coach for college baseball and softball. Earlier in the day, Rogers broke the news that proposal No. 2018-34, reportedly backed by the majority of Pac-12 institutions, had been struck down by the 40-person Division I Council.

College baseball fans and writers across the country came after Barnes, noting the paradox of Oregon State — the 2018 College World Series champion — choosing to vote against legislation that supported the growth of college baseball.

But the truth is more complicated than that.

The original SEC-driven proposal was restricted to baseball and gave schools the option of hiring a third paid assistant while keeping a volunteer on staff. Baseball has the worst paid coach-to-player ratio among all Division I sports at 1 to 12. Softball is 1 to 7.

Late in the process, softball was added to the proposal for reasons that remain unclear. The proposal was also altered to remove the volunteer position and convert it to full-time, leaving the overall coach-to-player ratio unchanged.

When Barnes, faculty athletic representative Joey Spatafora, deputy athletic director Marianne Vydra and senior associate athletic director Kyle Pifer sat down to review the final proposal, all four agreed: Oregon State would be voting no.

Barnes invited The Oregonian/OregonLive to his office Monday afternoon to offer an explanation.

“It’s not suggesting that we wouldn’t look at doing something for softball, but we can’t treat it the same (as baseball),” Barnes said. “They don’t have the same roster size, they don’t have the same issues. We want to look at it separately, that’s really it.”

The average Division I baseball roster features 35 players, compared to 20 for softball. Baseball programs have only 11.7 scholarships to distribute; softball gets 12.

Barnes said he “100 percent” would have backed a baseball-only proposal that merely converted a volunteer assistant to full-time. But in reality, Barnes wants to do much more to improve baseball’s scholarship numbers and coach-to-player ratio.

“The 11.7 scholarships is another piece that I think we’ve got to look at,” Barnes said. “I don’t have any answers in terms of what we might think about, but is there a baseball reform package that includes (scholarships and coaches)?

“I believe that this proposal came out and, with the addition of softball, was really hasty. It didn’t give us a chance to view it … so let’s get back to the table and work on that separately.”

While the Division I Council’s votes have yet to be released, Rogers reported that the SEC, ACC and Pac-12 voted yes while the Big 12 and Big Ten were both nos. All 32 conferences had one representative on the council. Colorado athletic director Rick George submitted the Pac-12 vote.

The Division I Council uses a weighted voting process that gives the Power 5 conferences 37.5 percent of the vote. FCS and no-football conferences also receive 37.5 percent, followed by the Group of 5 (18.8 percent), student-athlete representatives (3.1 percent) and faculty (3.1 percent).

A simple majority is needed to pass a measure. Failed proposals may not be re-submitted for a two-year period, but it’s widely believed that a baseball-specific rule change would count as new legislation that could potentially be voted on next April.

“Strong legislative proposals are passed with great support,” Barnes said. “This didn’t get passed at all, and I believe the reason was because we hitched softball to it.”

Critics of the dissenters have noted that the proposal simply provided the option for schools to add a paid assistant. It was not a requirement.

If the proposal had passed, Barnes could have converted current volunteer baseball assistant Ryan Gipson to a full-time position while keeping softball volunteer Hannah Akamine in her role. Volunteer assistants often make their money running camps, holding private lessons and fundraising.

Barnes called the lack of a mandate “permissive legislation.”

“And what that means is once it’s on the table, you’re going to add it because you’re going to want to compete,” Barnes said. “So the reality is that even though people say you don’t have to, you do. And that’s because it’s permissive.

“Everybody else around us would potentially be adding to softball and we wouldn’t, that’s not how we want to do it. So let’s attack softball by itself and revisit baseball in a way that’s even more comprehensive.”

Barnes won’t have to wait long to get cracking on a new strategy for baseball. He is scheduled to meet with George and the other Pac-12 ADs next week.

“It will be discussed at our meetings on some level as we huddle up and start talking about the next way to do this and a different way to do this,” Barnes said.

Barnes talked directly with Pat Bailey and let the interim head baseball coach know that Oregon State would be voting no. Barnes said he did not speak with former coach Pat Casey, now a senior associate athletic director, about the matter.

“Look, every baseball coach in America wanted this to pass,” said Barnes, who praised the job Bailey is doing for the fourth-ranked Beavers. “Every one of them, so let’s just be frank there. That said, I think there’s a better way and maybe we can even get more, and I’m hopeful we can. That’s my perspective.”

Barnes estimated that the small committee of Spatafora, Vydra, Pifer and himself votes on 50 to 70 pieces of legislation per year. In his three decades of college administration experience, Barnes said an in-house vote had never become public until last week.

“It’s very odd,” Barnes said. “This completely caught us off guard, but I’m happy about that fact that we’re talking about it because we get to share our sentiments.”

Late last Friday, back in Texas, Barnes reached out to Rogers after the Twitterverse freakout. He knew the optics were bad and wanted to set the record straight before heading home.

Rogers took the time to listen and fired off a few follow-up tweets later that evening. The college baseball world has seemingly calmed down since the vote, but Barnes still wants it to be known that he’s fully on board with growing the game.

“I want to look at this and be aggressive in improving baseball,” Barnes said. “I support baseball, but I want to do it the right way.”

— Bob Lundeberg for The Oregonian/OregonLive