I also thought that by funding softball, you build a base of knowledgeable participants whose children will play baseball/softball and watch the game in years to come. This angle seems solely focused on upping of women's scholarships to allow more baseball scholarships for the development of poorer athletes for baseball opportunities outside of the minor draft.
Softball has 12 and given their modified rules allowing re-entry, the additional scholarships would not be used logically by the teams and would add to the stockpiling of players.
As has been noted many times here, College Football and its completely unbalanced need for 85 scholarships, 11 coaches, 4 grad assistants and upto 30 quality control assistants/support staff are killing all other non-revenue sports for men. The addition of an 11th coach just happened. The scholarships alone are an enormous burden for schools. 85 for 22 starting positions, MCBB has 13, Baseball 11.7, Soccer 9.9, Swimming 9.9, Tennis 4.5, Golf 4.5, Wrestling 9.9.
So as you can see football has 4 times coverage of field personnel (85-22), MCBB next at 2.6 (13-5), the rest of the sports are at 1 or less. Just sad so many schools put their eggs in one basket. The issue isn't the sport itself, its the overfunding of scholarships-why 85? Why not 40-50? This limitation would not harm the sport. The 4 times coverage is excessive when compared to all other sports and it creates stockpiling of players. With 50 scholarships, Schools would only give full rides to the top 25% of the players and partial rides to the rest. How many 6'7" 325 lb lineman get a full ride but don't even play at the top schools? Far too many.
Rant over.