Some schools don't like multi-year scholarships ...

There's still not much hard evidence yet about which schools might be offering the new NCAA-approved multi-year scholarships to college football players. But the Austin American-Statesman's Kirk Bohls has a good article today about the entire issue. Bohls notes that some coaches argue that players with multi-year scholarships might become complacent and not work as hard to perform at their best if they know they won't lose those scholarships. With one-year renewable scholarships, they argue, student-athletes have something to work for, and therefore will be more accountable.

Guess that could be an issue for some players, but it's hard for me to believe it would be widespread, certainly not at a level to jeopardize the whole concept. Instead, multi-year scholarships would seem to be one of the few protections players have in world of Division I college football, where coaches have ultimate control over so much of their player's lives, and there is generally little room for players to appeal any coaching decision or behavior. For once, we have an NCAA that is looking out for players' best interest, even if it comes at the expense of the winning-at-any-cost mentality that permeates much of today's big-time college football.

See previous posts in this blog for more background on the multi-year scholarship issue.

Multi-year scholarships ... anyone offering them?

Trying to determine how multi-year athletic scholarships (which can be offered by NCAA Division I colleges and universities now) might change football recruiting, I posed this question to the football recruiting experts at Dave Campell's Texas Football's “Mailbag Madness” column: “Now that Division I multi-year scholarships have withstood a challenge, are any Texas colleges or universities offering them?”

In response, they said they're not aware of any being offered so far, but ... so be sure to take a look at their insightful answer. (At that link, scroll down to the end of the page.)

See my previous post on multi-year scholarships for more background on them. 

Multi-year scholarships survive ... just barely

The votes are in, and multi-year scholarships for Division I schools survive ... but just barely! Opponents of the optional multi-year scholarships, which now can be awarded to student-athletes instead of the previously required one-year renewable scholarships, needed 62.5 percent of the vote to overturn it. They got 62.12 percent, reports the NCAA.

Those percentages are based on similarly close vote counts. Overturning the measure would have required 207 votes -- five-eighths of the total -- from 330 institutions. But opponents only mustered 205 votes, reports Steve Wieberg in USA Today.

The vote was required of the Division I membership after enough schools complained about the multi-year scholarship reform measure, which was adopted late last year by the NCAA Division I Board of Directors.

This extremely close vote indicates, however, that there's not much consensus on this issue among Division I institutions. So what are the implications? Hard to know at this point, because it depends on how many institutions move to multi-year scholarships, and how soon they do that. But it seems clear that it will be a great recruiting tool for the schools that offer them. And it would seem to be a great deal for student-athletes too, guaranteeing them a scholarship for the length of their eligibility, giving them needed security for all of the contributions they make to a school's athletic program and thus the school itself.

But might there be some downsides, too? For example, it would seem that there will be fewer opportunities for walk-on football players to earn a scholarship at a Division I school. That's simply because the guaranteed multi-year scholarships allow schools much less flexibility ... at least as compared to the renewable one-year scholarships ... in making year-to-year scholarship decisions. To be sure, fewer scholarships will now become available, under the 85-scholarship limit in place for Division I institutions, to walk-on players. What do you think?

NCAA reforms ... the lastest

Where do we begin in noting all that came out of the NCAA’s annual convention, which concluded on Saturday?  NCAA president Mark Emmert is really shaking up things, especially in Division I college football, which might make you wonder how many toes he’s stepped on and thus how long his tenure will be. After all, the NCAA is made up of member organizations whose representatives hire the NCAA president. But Emmert’s original five-year contract was extended for an additional two years by a unanimous vote of the NCAA’s Executive Committee last week. That means he’ll be around until at least October 2017, which would seem to be enough time to push through quite a few needed reforms that he’s backing, with more to come, no doubt. So his extension might be the biggest single item to note in all of the news from last week.  Hmmm … will the NCAA’s big football powers try to deal with this within the organization, or will they think of pulling out of the NCAA and starting their own, separate association?  That’s a topic for another day.

For now, let’s take a look at some other big, recruiting-related, Division I items coming out of last week’s annual NCAA meeting:

·         The $2,000 stipend proposal seems to have strong support among the college presidents and chancellors who make up the Division I Board of Directors, although they sent the proposal to a committee (okay, a “working group”) to work out implementation details and come back with recommendations in April.  After any changes are made to the proposal at that point, the NCAA membership would then again have the opportunity to give it give a thumbs up or thumbs down.

This stipend was approved, for immediate implementation, by the NCAA Board of Directors last fall as a way to provide help full-ride scholarship athletes pay for miscellaneous costs – things like a movie, laundry, transportation, or meals out – beyond the tuition, fees, room, and board for which scholarships pay. Although the stipend wasn’t mandatory, 160 schools objected to the measure by December, which meant that it was suspended and had to go back to the Board last week for another look. Much of the opposition was based on the cost of the stipend to schools, and the limited resources with which many of them have to pay for it. And if they didn’t implement it, they felt – it would seem legitimately – that they would be at a competitive disadvantage when recruiting student-athletes.  Concerns about gender equity issues – since football programs put many more men, compared to women in other sports, on full scholarships at a given school.

It’s interesting to note, though, that the student-athletes who signed national letters of intent in November – and who were promised the stipend at that time, when it was in place – will still receive it. Students who signed after the measure was suspended in December will not.

·         Allowing schools to offer multi-year scholarships – instead of only year-to-year scholarships based on performance –  seems to be a done deal, pending a vote by the entire Division I membership in February. Although concerns about this measure were also voiced by schools in December, not enough of them objected to cause suspension, and the Board stood by it at the NCAA meeting last week.

·         Parents can now be considered agents. This measure would prevent parents from “shopping” their student-athlete children to schools. In other words, parents could no longer ask a school for money (something other than a scholarship) in return for their kids to sign with that school.

·         Proposals to limit the number of scholarships – by five in football – were defeated. It would seem that savings in this area would have provided money to fund the $2,000 stipend at many schools, but that analysis might be too simplistic and naïve, I realize. And, of course, a reduction in scholarships would eliminate opportunities for some student-athletes to play college football in roles other than walk-ons that pay their own way.  Bummer.

  

Comments?  Insights?

Another NCAA reform now in limbo ...

Uh-oh. For the second time in that number of weeks, enough NCAA schools have objected to an NCAA reform measure to throw it into limbo. This time, it's a provision adopted in October to allow multi-year Division I  football scholarships rather than the one-year renewable schollies now in place. Because at least 75 schools objected to the rule within 60 days, it will be reconsidered by the NCAA's Division I Board of Governors when it convenes in mid-January 2012.

Earlier this month, the NCAA suspended another new reform measure that would have allowed schools to provide an additional $2,000 stipend -- called a "miscellaneous expense allowance" -- to help some scholarship athletes pay for incidental costs they incur as college students (as noted in previous posts on this blog). It, too, will be reconsidered at the January Board of Governors meeting.

Both measures were initially adopted after NCAA President Mark Emmert called a retreat for college presidents to discuss ways to improve NCAA athletics. Notably, both of these measures are directed at improving conditions for NCAA student-athletes, whose welfare has not been much of a priority for the NCAA in the past.

Kudos to Emmert for pushing these and other proposals aimed at improving the lives of student-athletes. But after such wide and quick dissent among the NCAA member institutions, you have to wonder how much longer they will put up with him and his reform mindset. After all, they hired him and could fire him. Firing him would seem to be a tragedy, perhaps still another indication -- exemplified in the extreme by the very sad events over the past decade or so at Penn State -- that the institution of college football outweighs the welfare of the most-vulnerable and most-expendable people involved with it.

The $2,000 stipend suspended, for now ...

Remember that new NCAA provision adopted in November that would allow Division I athletic conferences to allow their institutions to give an additional $2,000 to some scholarship athletes to cover some of their incidental college expenses? Well, not so fast. After 125 schools by December 15 had requested an override of the new rule, the NCAA decided to suspend it at least until the NCAA Board of Governors meets in mid-January, when changes could be made in it. In general, the schools requested the override based on one or more of these factors -- the speed at which the new rule came about, concerns about its effect on fair competition, concerns about implementation in all sports, and concerns about the effect on activities related to Title IX (the 1972 federal law prohibiting any form of gender-based discrimination in any educational activity -- including athletics -- at institutions receiving federal funds).

The $2,000 stipend for scholarship athletes ...

Now the NCAA will allow college football conferences to allow – if they want – their schools to give athletes on full scholarships an additional stipend of up to $2,000 per year. The need for this additional money is understandable. After all, despite its value to players, even a full-ride scholarship doesn’t provide money for gas … for an occasional pizza … for a movie.  And even if scholarship athletes could get legitimate jobs, the time demands of their commitment to the team don’t come close to allowing that. There are practices, meetings, workouts … even the so-called “voluntary” workouts during the summer … that effectively turn many college athletes, and especially those at Division I schools, into de facto full-time employees of the institution, even if that makes these student-athletes’ educations a secondary consideration (an issue for another day here). So based on the need to help these full-ride scholarship players cope with legitimate, additional financial needs, NCAA president Mark Emmert makes a good case, as noted in a great question-and-answer exchange in the Houston Chronicle. But part of what he says – that this will not widen the gap between the football programs with great resources and the football programs with not-so-great resources – is a bit of a stretch. Although we’re all familiar with media reports of how much revenue football programs bring in,  that's the exception rather than the rule. The fact is that most don’t make money. In fact, between 2004 and 2010, only 7 percent of Football Bowl Subdivision (Division I-A) made money, according to an NCAA report.  UPDATE: As of December 15, the rule was suspended, pending a meeting of the NCAA board of Governors in mid-January,2012.