Silly Scholarship Question

Submitted by Ziff72 on

There has been a lot of talk lately about Saban using "The Bear" scholarship to get more players in. I think it has something to do with the siblings of players that played for Bear Bryant. If this is true I wonder if anyone knows what the rules are for setting up a scholarship to circumvent the 85 total?? Seems like this is ripe for abuse. If you have a brainiac on the team could you get him an academic scholarship?? Could RR set up a "really fast dudes scholarship"?? Just curious if anyone knows the particulars of Saban's run around if what I heard was true. Thanks.

BlockM

February 10th, 2010 at 7:29 PM ^

Not an expert, but doesn't ANY full scholarship count? So if someone is there on full academic scholarship and gets on the team, they still count against the limit?

Blue_Bull_Run

February 10th, 2010 at 7:39 PM ^

You get 85 scholarship athletes, regardless of where that scholarship comes from. Could be a football scholarship, the Braylon Edwards scholarship, or an academic scholarship (I think).

aenima0311

February 10th, 2010 at 8:30 PM ^

I though they used the Bear Bryant scholorship to get kids in the door, and that the 85 limit was for players who reached the field. I think it was in a thread on oversigning a few days ago....

An example would be:

Player X comes in, redshirts and doesn't play at all as a freshman and for those two years he is on the Bear Bryant Scholorship. If as a redshirt Sophomore he is ready to contribute, he moves on to a full football scholorship and is counted against the 85.

I'm pretty sure this is right, but not 100%. Anyone know for certain?

If it is true, it's pretty shady and certainly circumvents the spirit, if not the letter, of the NCAA rules on atheletes and scholorship limits.

bronxblue

February 10th, 2010 at 9:08 PM ^

As I understand it, you are only allowed 85 scholarship players on the active roster, and it doesn't matter how they are getting their money. With revenue sports like football and basketball at major colleges, the money issue isn't overly relevant, so spending an athletic scholarship versus an academic one is probably not that relevant. The only time I could see using an academic is if you basically want to "redshirt" a guy but still make it possible for him to come to the school. In general, though, academic scholarships have pretty high standards for retaining them, so the NCAA will obviously notice if some 2.0 student is hanging onto one.

Where this probably becomes a bigger issue is with non-revenue sports and schools with smaller athletic budgets. There, getting a kid to the school on an academic scholarship means you don't have to dip into the AD's budget, which could be key. I know that's a major issue with some of the smaller D1 basketball teams, and they'll sometimes recruit kids who may not be super players but who they know can cut it academically and probably snag a scholarship that way. That topic was brought up a couple of times in The Last Amateurs by John Feinstein.

bronxblue

February 10th, 2010 at 9:10 PM ^

As I understand it, you are only allowed 85 scholarship players on the active roster, and it doesn't matter how they are getting their money. With revenue sports like football and basketball at major colleges, the money issue isn't overly relevant, so spending an athletic scholarship versus an academic one is probably not that relevant. The only time I could see using an academic is if you basically want to "redshirt" a guy but still make it possible for him to come to the school. In general, though, academic scholarships have pretty high standards for retaining them, so the NCAA will obviously notice if some 2.0 student is hanging onto one.

Where this probably becomes a bigger issue is with non-revenue sports and schools with smaller athletic budgets. There, getting a kid to the school on an academic scholarship means you don't have to dip into the AD's budget, which could be key. I know that's a major issue with some of the smaller D1 basketball teams, and they'll sometimes recruit kids who may not be super players but who they know can cut it academically and probably snag a scholarship that way. That topic was brought up a couple of times in The Last Amateurs by John Feinstein.

phild7686

February 10th, 2010 at 10:34 PM ^

I'm pretty sure academic scholarships do not count against the 85 that they are able to offer, but the reason why they don't switch players over to academic scholarships is because most of them aren't nearly as good as the full ride athletic scholarship which includes tuition+room/board+books, and most of the players don't have the grades to get one that is at least as good as their athletic scholarship.

If academic scholarships did count towards the 85 then that would mean the coaches would have to find walk-ons who didn't already have a scholarship of any kind.

jaggs

February 10th, 2010 at 10:39 PM ^

is that if a player receives a scholarship of any sort and they are on the football roster, it counts as 1 of the 85. For example, Denard could not be given a track scholarship to open one up for the football team. This applies to football and basketball for sure and maybe some other sports.

umhero

February 10th, 2010 at 10:53 PM ^

Actually the Bear Bryant Scholarship is brilliant because players on that scholarship are treated as preferred walkons as long as they weren't officially recruited, meaning they never took an official visit, the staff didn't frequently visit, or they didn't receive frequent recruiting calls. If they were officially recruited they will count against the 85 scholarships in the season they see the field, so a player that doesn't play for the first two seasons doesn't count against the cap until the third season.

The reason they are able to circumvent the schollie rule with this is the scholarship isn't an athletic scholarship. Any child of a former player or coach of Bear Bryant is eligible as long as they can get into the school; they don't have to ever participate in any athletic endeavor.

Obviously this is an advantage for 'Bama. The NCAA realized that this could be abused so they closed the loophole for creating scholarships like this, but they grandfathered the Bear Bryant scholarship.

I have tried to find out how many players have actually received the scholarship and played, but all I can find are anecdotes without stats.

Zone Left

February 11th, 2010 at 12:30 AM ^

There are actually lots of creative ways to get non-football scholarship football players money for school. Elite track athletes may receive track scholarships (only 12.7 rides per track team limit this). In addition, there is a lot of non-scholarship financial aid that schools give--even at the D-III level.

jmblue

February 11th, 2010 at 3:53 PM ^

I think it has something to do with the siblings of players that played for Bear Bryant.

I assume you meant "children" and not siblings - unless Bear's players came from really, really big families.