Good piece in today’s The Chronicle of Higher Education about the slow growth in multi-year scholarships being offered after the NCAA last year adopted a policy allowing programs to guarantee athletics aid for multiple years. I think it shows that schools are feeling their way around what works for them on this front.
When things shake out, it’ll make for a useful recruiting tool, particularly for schools that can’t match the resources that some of the big boys tout.
Instead of offering more guaranteed aid, the most powerful programs are relying on their rich athletics traditions, broad television exposure, and other advantages over less-wealthy foes. But a handful of power programs appear to be using multiyear aid as a recruiting inducement in the biggest sports.
Florida says it has given multiyear awards to “pretty much every eligible football player.” At Ohio State, more than half of its 41 new offers of multiyear aid went to football and basketball players.
Some mid-major programs are using the four-year guarantees as points of differentiation against bigger programs. Fresno State University handed out 425 multiyear awards this year—one for every scholarship athlete—says Jason Clay, an assistant director of communications. One reason, he says, was to reduce pressure on students who had to compete for spots every year.
Other mid-major officials say they are open to multiyear agreements when athletes demand it.
“We’re not out there selling it, but if a student-athlete says, ‘I want a two-year deal,’ or, ‘I want this guaranteed for four years,’ we can certainly do that,” says Mario Moccia, athletic director at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
All of which makes me hope that Texas, the richest program in D-1 athletics, loses a few kids along the way because of its arrogance.
“Who gets a four-year, $120K deal guaranteed at age 17?” Christine A. Plonsky, women’s athletic director at the University of Texas, wrote in an e-mail to The Chronicle. “The last thing young people need right now is more entitlement.”
Yeah, save entitlement for things like the Longhorn Network, bitches!
I guess Plonsky’s point is that at Texas, what’s sauce for the goose 50ish-year old head coach in the form of a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract with buyout clause isn’t sauce for the gander student-athlete. And they say youth is wasted on the young.
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