OT: Are Athletic Scholarships Year by Year
At the end of an article defending the Alabama Medical Scholarships, there's the following line:
The report does not mention the fact that football scholarships are good for one year and then are renewable. It is a common misconception that scholarships are four-year deals between schools and student-athletes.
Is this true? As far as I can tell, per NCAA regulations it is, but there must be more to it. Can someone shed some light on this, otherwise I don't see the need to offer medical scholarships or make players transfer, you could just "cut" them. Obviously I'm missing something.
Link: http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2010/09/castoffs_who_accepted_medical.html
September 24th, 2010 at 5:26 PM ^
Scholarships are only guaranteed for one year.
September 24th, 2010 at 5:26 PM ^
Officially, yes, but it's SOP to automatically renew everyone's. The only exception might be for a walk-on that happens to earn one.
September 24th, 2010 at 5:26 PM ^
September 24th, 2010 at 5:29 PM ^
Ya its year to year. I know someone who actually had his yanked his junior year because he wasn't as good as he was "supposed" to be. That was baseball though and i just assume its the same for football.
September 24th, 2010 at 5:35 PM ^
Yes, it is the same for all sports. Although, the numbers of scholarships given for each sport are drastically different. In a sport like baseball, you have so very few scholarship per the actual number of players you need on a team, that each dollar is critical.
September 24th, 2010 at 5:49 PM ^
Just spit out my coffee laughing at that avatar picture. . . . SENSATIONAL!
September 24th, 2010 at 6:58 PM ^
September 24th, 2010 at 5:30 PM ^
c-c-c-combo breaker
September 24th, 2010 at 5:30 PM ^
since they were not then and are not now a payment for services rendered (meaning payment for playing on a team), but rather an award for past excellence, a guy (I think he was a Villanova basketball player) decided he no longer wanted to play basketball. The university tried to take away his scholarship, and he sued and won. The NCAA then went to 1 year renewable scholarships, so the most a school can be hurt if a guy decides to quit is one year.
September 24th, 2010 at 5:58 PM ^
With so many programs cutting players and not graduating them the ncaa instituted that apr point thing.
So now the new way of getting around kicking a player off the team without losing apr is putting them on a medical scholarship. But I believe that is a 1yr deal to, if he is healthy the next yr the program either has to release them if they want to transfer or put them back on athletic scholarship....
Sec is again at the top of this list....12 per yr per team on avg.....thing is sec once they do that, they lose that player the entire yr and I don't think they are eligible to practice in spring ball either.....
September 24th, 2010 at 6:41 PM ^
For Baseball, full (100%) scholarships are hardly ever handed out to athletes. Usually the most is about 75-85%.
There are only 12 (maybe 11) scholarships total. Spread that across 30-40 guys if a coach is trying to get as many athletes on scholarship as possible.
And yes they are only year to year.
September 24th, 2010 at 6:50 PM ^
Wouldn't it be advantageous to offfer players 4 year scholorships if it was permissible? Therefore a kid could choose between a 4 year guaranteed scholorship to one school compared to a one year to another.
Although since its SOP to renew, I'm not sure this really helps.
September 24th, 2010 at 7:57 PM ^
Yeah, I don't think it would create enough of the scholarship equivalent of price discrimination to make it worthwhile to either party. I would imagine the risk of taking a year-by-year scholarship is minimal compared to a 4-year scholarship elsewhere based on the renewal rate, as you already stated.
One thing that might work, though, is add in a graduate scholarship. That way, players that feel they may not make it to the NFL would be better off picking the school that guarantees them graduate school. Then again, I would imagine that this would just become standard practice to all big-time schools once offered by one big-time school, anyway.
September 24th, 2010 at 8:13 PM ^
September 24th, 2010 at 8:18 PM ^
September 24th, 2010 at 8:28 PM ^
Alabama and their fans could care less what Saban does because of on field results. I'm sure that if we were coming off a national championship and 2nd straight BCS game that none of us would care anyway since it appears to be a legal loop hole. Hopefully someone closes this or makes it a lot harder for Bama to just make more room for classes by giving them a med schollie