Derek Jeter wants to own a team and help baseball grow

Retired New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter took a break from not playing baseball to give an interview with CNBC's Squak Box on Wednesday, and he had a lot to say about the game of baseball.

Not surprisingly, Jeter loves baseball. And because he loves it, he wants to help it grow, and owning a baseball team is how he believes he can do that. Sadly, he immediately crossed the Yankees off that list, because even he doesn't have that kind of money.

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You can watch an excerpt of the interview here, which covers a very interesting comment that Jeter made about why he thinks that baseball isn't as popular as basketball and football.

Aside from his jab at kids today, Jeter is specifically taking a shot at the NFL and the NBA and their lack of required player development. He's saying that baseball is better for having the minor-league system, but because of that extra step, high school and college phenoms don't immediately make the transition to the majors.

But there's another force at work that Jeter only skirts, and that's the popularity of college sports. College basketball and football are insanely popular and profitable. For example, CBS shows NCAA Basketball Tournament games on their entire family of networks for at least three weeks, including ones that show zero sports during the other 49 weeks of the year. College baseball is simply not that popular, and without that popularity, there's less visibility for rising stars, even if they become "lost" (as Jeter put it) due to the minor league system.

MLB is working to fix some of that, though. They've been trying to make the draft more of an event, inviting young players in their sharp suits to sit with their families in a big room at MLB Network and wait for their names to be called. But not all cable companies carry MLB Network and it's often part of a higher-tier (i.e. more expensive) package. It's hard to make something into a must-watch event if the channel itself is hard to get.

And as far as keeping track of those players once they're drafted, MiLB.TV is the way to do that. It's MLB.TV's minor league sibling, featuring live minor league games every day. The fee is less than its big brother, but the selection is also limited, and it's not particularly well known (or well advertised).

MLB doesn't always make it easy for baseball evangelists like Jeter to spread the good word of the game. There are big issues to tackle to make the game more accessible to everyone. Jeter barely scratched the surface in his interview, but it will take big-name players, both current and former, with big ideas and big talent to push baseball into a new realm of popularity.

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Liz Roscher is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at lizroscher@yahoo.com or follow her on twitter! Follow @lizroscher