Once again, the NCAA has genuflected to the almighty dollar.

A couple of weeks ago, the august body that governs university athletics declined to cut back on the number of baseball games a school can schedule.

Games, after all, generate revenue, and slicing dates undermines gate receipts.

Meanwhile, the NCAA’s own grade-point average compilations show baseball players consistently rank on or close to the bottom in academic success.

Why wouldn’t baseball players struggle in the classroom? They have less non-game time than any other intercollegiate athlete. Of all the sports, baseball eats the most hours in active competition.

In truth, though, the number of games isn’t the problem. It’s the length of the games themselves.

Take Kansas University’s baseball team, for example. The Jayhawks played 58 games. That sounds like a lot, yet KU’s softball team played 57 games – only one fewer – and no one is saying softball needs to truncate its season.

The difference is, of course, duration. Softball games typically last around two hours while baseball games : well, let’s just say, you’ll be waiting a loooooong time for the seventh-inning stretch.

KU’s baseball game with Nebraska on Saturday night lasted a mind-numbing three hours and 39 minutes. Both teams’ pitchers combined to issue 14 walks and hit three batters. NU won 11-9.

And that wasn’t even the Jayhawks’ longest nine-inning game of the season. A couple of weeks earlier, Kansas State tripped KU, 7-4, and the elapsed time was six minutes short of four hours. Unbelievable.

A little more math shows that KU’s 27 baseball games against Big 12 Conference foes lasted an average of three hours and four minutes. Meanwhile, the average length of a KU football game last fall was three hours and 16 minutes – a figure fattened by a couple of overtime games, one lasting exactly four hours and the other 3:52.

That 3:04 baseball duration is also slightly skewed by an 11-inning game at Texas A&M that lasted an interminable 4:26. (Curiously, that was the only extra-inning game the Jayhawks played all season).

Still, the fact remains baseball games last nearly as long as football games, yet baseball teams play three and four times a week. Putting it another way, baseball players are on the field four times as often as football players.

That’s too long.

So here’s my suggestion to the NCAA: If you’re going to retain the schedule status quo, the only option to give baseball players less time on the field and the best way to do that is to shorten games from nine innings to seven innings.

High school baseball and softball games end after seven innings. So do college softball games. Why not college baseball games, too? Heck, attendance might even go up if fans realize they won’t have to spend an eternity at the ball park.

Sure, the coaches will squawk about abandoning the traditional nine-inning format, but who’s running the show? This isn’t pro baseball. This is a university extra-curricular activity. Or is supposed to be, anyway.