Players, coaches and fans are arguing about bat power -- not home runs slammed by pumped-up major-league sluggers, but searing drives off the aluminum bats of college whiz kids.

Ping! -- the sound of an aluminum bat connecting with a baseball -- is at the center of one of the hottest debates in college sports. Are high-tech aluminum bats too powerful, even dangerous? After passing new regulations for this season's playoffs, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, has commissioned a panel to study the issue. Made up of baseball experts and scientists, the group is expected to deliver a report by July 1. Regardless of what they recommend, one thing seems certain -- the general confusion and ill will surrounding the issue makes further debate inevitable.

"All you have to do is talk to pro scouts" says Bill Thurston, Amherst College's baseball coach and editor of the NCAA Division I baseball rules committee. "They think the college game is ridiculous." Certainly the college game is characterized by eye-popping home runs and football-like scores, even during the College World Series-championship. Among last year's tallies: USC 21, Arizona State 14; among this year's: Florida State 14, Stanford 11.

Introduced in the mid-1970s as a cheaper, more durable alternative to wood, metal bats have become increasingly potent, forged with advanced alloys enclosing pressurized air chambers. Some coaches and players claim these powerful bats are ruining the integrity of the game and placing pitchers at undue risk. Bat manufacturers and others counter that the bats are perfectly safe and that extra power isn't such a bad thing.

The NCAA is caught in the middle. "At least 90 percent of my time deals with this issue" says Bill Rowe, athletic director at Southwest Missouri State University and chairman of the NCAA rules committee. "Not base running, or pitching, or ejections or any of those things. Always the bat."