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How
College Scholarships Really Work |
Chris Mohr submitted this
note below to the Soccer Coach-L mailing list. It is well worth
reading by all U16 and above coaches and all soccer parents. It will
probably shock some soccer parents into the reality of college costs and
possible soccer scholarships.
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There's a fascinatingly informative article published yesterday (Dec 1st)
in
the San Jose Mercury News about the uncomfortably mercenary pressures on
players caused by college soccer being classified by the NCAA as an
"equivalency" scholarship sport, in contrast to being classified
as a "head
count" scholarship sport like basketball.
Briefly, in a
"head count" sport, even $1 of aid counts as using a full
scholarship out of the maximum allowable in that sport, e.g. 12 (so there
is powerful incentive to offer players a full, not just partial, athletic
scholarship).
By contrast, in an "equivalency" scholarship
sport,
the program is free to divide the value of the 12 full scholarships into
as many fractional scholarship pieces as they wish, so e.g. only 6 players
on the team may be on "full" athletic scholarship, and 12 more
may be on partial scholarships whose aggregate value is equivalent to 6
full scholarships (with the parts not necessarily equally divided among
players).
Note from Ken Gamble - Most Division I Men's Soccer programs
offer 9.9 scholarships while most Division I Women's programs
offer 12 scholarships.
While the article explores the
typical dilemma the equivalency
scholarship system creates when a high school player is being recruited by
less prominent school A, which considers offering a full scholarship,
versus
much more prominent school B, which is considering offering only a partial
(and just how partial?) scholarship to them, the really fascinating part
is
about the pressures which operate within programs to increase or decrease
the original fractional share for particular athletes, based on the
player's
performance and the program's recruiting prospects for next year's crop of
high school seniors.
Just like a professional sports franchise,
pressure
may be applied to existing players to accept lesser fractional scholarship
shares next year in order to be able to recruit an outstanding prospect
for
next year. The program may also want to increase the scholarship
share for
some players whose performance last season proved their increased value to
the team...but this has to come from somewhere, and they still have to
recruit incoming freshmen.
The implications of what's
discussed in this article must be
considered by any youth soccer player with ambitions to win a soccer
scholarship to a college (and anyone advising them). The original
article
can be found at:
http://www.sjmercury.com/sports/top/soccer01.htm
It is also posted below.
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Published Wednesday, December 1, 1999,
The San Jose Mercury News |
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BY JODY MEACHAM
Mercury News Staff Writer |
THE RECRUITING process had become an excruciating ordeal. USC and New
Mexico were offering the all-expenses-paid grand prize: full tuition,
fees, books, room and board if only Kim Pickup would play soccer for them.
But Pickup had always dreamed of attending Santa Clara, and Broncos Coach
Jerry Smith was offering only tuition and books. ``I talked to my parents,
and I said, `If money is a problem, let me know from the beginning so I
don't start wanting this school and then you say sorry,' '' Pickup
recalled. But Bedford Pickup, a sales manager for a national computer
manufacturer in Chatsworth, could swing the extra cost in the family
budget. So this weekend, Kim will conclude her college soccer career as a
Broncos defender playing for the national championship at Spartan Stadium.
The arcane rules of
scholarships and the high-pressure recruiting process have made for
"a stressful four years,'' Bedford Pickup said, "but I guess
that's what being a parent is all about.''
Not all college
athletic scholarships are created equal to the full rides offered in
football and men's and women's basketball, known as "head-count
sports'' in college athletics. Soccer and a host of other so-called minor
sports are part of a stranger universe called ``equivalency sports,''
where schools not only trump rivals' financial offers for athletes (don't
call it bidding) but also where players' financial aid may go up or down
each season (don't call them raises or pay cuts) and where teammates may
be asked to chip in part of their scholarships to sign a hot new prospect
(don't call that working the salary cap). If you do use those
parenthetical expressions, the NCAA -- the guardian of amateurism in
college sports -- is offended.
"I don't think
you'll find anybody in higher education who will suggest to you that a
scholarship is pay-for-play,'' NCAA spokesman Wally Renfro said.
"This is not a salary that you are offering somebody. It is not pay.
It is a reduction in the fees that it will cost you to go to school
there.'' Pay for performance, but to longtime critics of the
collegiate-sports system, that's a distinction without a difference.
"It's in instances
like this that you really see the nakedness of the position that full
rides sort of hide,'' said Murray Sperber, a Cal graduate and former
soccer writer for the Montreal Gazette who is an English professor at
Indiana University and the author of three books on college sports.
"The coach is essentially paying the athlete a certain amount and
moving around the salaries based on athletic performance. It's never
because they did great in class. The relationship is so clearly between
compensation and athletic talent and productivity that we are really
talking about professional sports.'' Even those involved with the system
acknowledge that, in equivalency sports, managing the complexities of
financial aid is akin to the job of an NFL general manager.
"There's a whole lot
of strategy,'' Smith said. "Can we offer this, or can we get away
with this? How many great players can we get with 12 scholarships? Do I
want to spend my money on a player knowing I'm going to have her for four
years when maybe I can get this other player next year?''
In head-count sports --
in NCAA Division I, that's football and basketball for men and basketball,
gymnastics, tennis and volleyball for women -- even $1 of athletic aid
given to a player counts as a full scholarship toward the NCAA scholarship
limit in that sport. There is little incentive for a school to give
partial scholarships. Splitting the pie But in equivalency sports, the
scholarship limit in a sport -- for example, 12 in women's soccer --
represents the total maximum aid allowable. The aid nearly always is
spread among more than 12 players, but it's legal as long as the total
value of the aid on the team doesn't exceed the value of 12 full rides.
"It puts a lot of stress on the kids,'' UCLA soccer coach Jillian
Ellis said. "Bidding wars are part of our sport. It's not
uncommon to say, "What did this school offer you?" and then we
try to match that. I've seen kids make a decision based on $1,000.''
For parents, many of whom
assume an athletic scholarship for soccer is just like one for basketball
-- a free education -- equivalency sports are bewildering. Bedford Pickup
said he told one recruiter who was low balling his daughter that
"it's not the girl's fault your school is more expensive.'' If
parents can't afford to cover the difference between an offer and a
school's costs, players have little choice but to choose the highest bid,
a financially based decision that a football or basketball player almost
never faces. That shifts the recruiting advantage to public schools.
At private Santa Clara,
where the freshman year costs $27,965, a tuition-and-books deal leaves the
player or her parents on the hook for $8,060. At rival North Carolina,
where an out-of-state full ride is worth $17,091, a tuition-and-books
offer to a California recruit leaves her family owing $5,997. "If you
have no money, money becomes the deciding factor,'' said Vicky Wagner, a
15-year coaching veteran of San Jose club soccer who had a player opt for
Texas this year when her first choice, Santa Clara, couldn't come up with
enough aid. "If the family has money, then they have options.''
In both head-count and
equivalency sports, a player's aid is subject to annual renewal. But in
equivalency sports, the better players commonly receive "raises.''
Upping the offer after two years of receiving only tuition and books,
Pickup got half her room and board covered for her junior season, an
increase equal to about $3,800 at Santa Clara, and full room and board
this season, another $3,800 increase. But raises may be difficult to grant
when there is a high school star out there who could put a team in the
final four.
North Carolina Coach
Anson Dorrance asked -- and received -- givebacks from some of his veteran
players in 1996 because he lost no seniors from the '95 team and needed
money to sign a freshman. "That seems like a legit request for the
good of the team if you can deal with giving back a little money and it's
not going to put you into bankruptcy,'' said Santa Clara's Aly Wagner,
Vicky's daughter, who as the nation's top-rated high school recruit in
1998 was among the minority of players who could command a full ride as a
freshman.
Nevertheless, such
choices are a part of the job many soccer coaches would rather do without,
and reclassifying soccer as a head-count sport would solve the problem.
"It's not fair to put a dollar figure on a player's head and try to
determine who is worth more monetarily to you than someone else,'' Brigham
Young Coach Jennifer Rockwood said. "It's hard to bring in freshmen
on more money than a starter is getting.''
The NCAA's original
classification was made in 1981, when it took over women's athletics, and
was based on what were the most popular sports at the time, Renfro said.
Only 22 of the 277 Division I schools that year offered women's soccer.
Last season, 233 of the 312 Division I schools fielded teams, and in
number of athletes, soccer ranks behind only indoor and outdoor track in
popularity. Still, there is no pending NCAA legislation to reclassify
soccer. That's probably because there is an assumption that doing so would
require an increase in the sport's scholarship limit, said Lynda Tealer,
Santa Clara's senior women's athletic administrator.
Who gets the most?
Dorrance, among other coaches, has devised an elaborate list of criteria
to determine how much money he gives each player on the team. For example,
a player on the U.S. national team or an All-American is entitled to a
full ride. "I try to award scholarships based on things that are out
of my control,'' he said. "One of the problems coaches run into when
selecting a more subjective standard like performance is that one of worst
things you can do to a young athlete, who cherishes your opinion, is not
to give scholarship money when you don't think her performance is good
enough.'' Pickup said she left the negotiations on her raises to her
father (don't call him an agent) because "I don't want it to affect
my relationship with my coach, and I don't want to be a bitter person.''
Her father has no complaints
about the way the four years worked out. "I thought Jerry made a fair
offer as to what he could reasonably do. He told us what he would attempt
to do about raises if he could, but he made no promises. To me, it's worth
the money to have this team, such a wonderful group of girls.''
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