Returning from a session of punting reps with the football team, Northwestern pitcher J.J. Standring trotted onto Rocky Miller Park in full pads and quickly got an earful.

“Thanks for showing up,” baseball coach Paul Stevens chided. He then shouted at Standring to steal second in a sprinting drill and take out the team’s second baseman, eliciting a chorus of taunts from the rest of the players.

After practice Standring’s teammates huddled around third baseman Wes Robinson as he tried on Standring’s uniform, playing the role of the two-sport athlete who now has a Big Ten championship ring with the football team.

“They like to try on all the gear and hope they’re football players,” Standring said with a smile, acknowledging that his double duty has been a source of amusement for his teammates most of the spring.

But he won’t be joking about it this weekend. The direct conflict between a baseball road trip to Michigan State and the spring football game Saturday has Standring – and linebacker/outfielder Dan Pohlman – holding his tongue about preferences, priorities and playing two sports.

The two have been juggling spring football and baseball for the past month, all while tiptoeing around a firm commitment one way or the other.

Standring, a senior, goes to football practice on his days off from baseball. And he occasionally strays a few hundred yards from the diamond on baseball days to kick around the football for half an hour.

Pohlman, on the other hand, must follow football coach Randy Walker’s rule that multisport freshmen devote their time foremost to his squad.

“I don’t think either one of them has priorities that one outweighs the other,” Stevens said. “They have commitments to what they have said they are going to do here at Northwestern. Both of them have lived up to things and both of these guys are people who I respect tremendously.”

Walker was a little less diplomatic.

“With J.J., the deal we’ve always had – and I kind of inherited the deal – is he’s baseball first,” Walker said. “With Dan it’s a little bit different. His first priority is football, until the day when he’s an accomplished, proven commodity – which he’s far from. I assume he’s going to be there Saturday. I haven’t even thought about it, but I guess if he isn’t here it means he’s quitting.”

This weekend Walker and Stevens have come just short of asking the two to declare themselves. And the verdict has Standring traveling to East Lansing, Mich., and Pohlman suiting up in Evanston.

The two players know better than to publicly chime in on the dispute. They can only follow through with their decisions this weekend and hope not to further inflame the coach that’s getting the short end of the stick.

The key is to avoid the word “priority.”

“I’m here on a football scholarship, and that basically makes my mind up for me right now,” said Pohlman, a second-team linebacker. “Baseball’s something that doesn’t pay my bills right now and football does.”

Things promise to calm down next week, with this weekend’s football scrimmage marking the end of spring practice, and Pohlman and Standring returning full-time to Stevens.

Standring has struggled with shoulder problems lately and is far from the form that propelled him to a 7-3 record two years ago.

But he threw two-thirds of an inning in relief against Indiana last weekend and impressed Stevens.

Pohlman, who started in right field Sunday, has played in 19 games this season with the baseball team. He should see more time in the outfield once he makes himself a regular at practice.

“It’s difficult not to play,” he said. “But I don’t deserve to play all the time because I’m not here.”