OT - Scholarship Question

Submitted by South TX MFan on

A coworker and I got into a debate over the use of scholarships. Basically my question is, what is there to prevent universities from circumventing athletic scholarship limits by giving athletes academic scholarships instead? Surely there must be rules in place to prevent (or at least curtail) this from happening but I haven't found a definitive answer.

GoWings2008

November 16th, 2017 at 1:45 PM ^

No expert by any means, but the checks and balances and verification of a kid's grades has got to be an obstacle.  A university will lose a lot of credibility by that practice and if they get caught doing it, there will be big penalties.  I have to imagine the controlling agencies/persons of academic scholarships hold them close to the vest and only give them to the right, deserving people.  

 

tf

November 16th, 2017 at 1:47 PM ^

I looked into this when my kid was being recruited.  My recollection is that essentially any aid received by an athlete in D1 or D2 makes that athlete count as a scholarship athlete.  I think there were potential exceptions if the athlete in question had very high GPA and test scores.  I do not recall hearing of those exceptions being exercise at U of M or elsewhere, so there may be even further limitations.

stephenrjking

November 16th, 2017 at 1:55 PM ^

Players who play two sports count against scholarship limits for both sports if they receive a scholarship for one of those. ie Drake Harris would count against the basketball team's total if he played for them. So having academic scholarships work the same way makes sense.

And this is logical when you think about it--if you didn't have this limit you could stock your football team with guys technically getting scholarships from some other squad. It wouldn't be surprising at all for a school like Alabama to start a fraudulent team specifically to provide extra scholarships for the football team. The guys would compete in the fraud sport but would basically just be football players showing up at games or meets to get squashed.

Red is Blue

November 16th, 2017 at 2:33 PM ^

Not how I understood it to work.  So I did a quick, limited search.  Maybe this isn't up to date or accurate, but was the best I could find at spelling it out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Division_I

 

this summary references, and appears to be consistent with, http://www.ncaapublications.com/productdownloads/D118.pdf which has 8/1/2017 as the effective day. 

 

The NCAA also has rules specifying the sport in which multi-sport athletes are to be counted, with the basic rules being:[54]

  • Anyone who participates in football is counted in that sport, even if he does not receive financial aid from the football program. An exception exists for players at non-scholarship FCS programs who receive aid in another sport.[55]
  • Participants in basketball are counted in that sport, unless they also play football.
  • Participants in men's ice hockey are counted in that sport, unless they also play football or basketball.
  • Participants in both men's swimming and diving and men's water polo are counted in swimming and diving, unless they count in football or basketball.
  • Participants in women's (indoor) volleyball are counted in that sport unless they also play basketball.
  • All other multi-sport athletes are counted in whichever sport the school chooses.

Mr Miggle

November 16th, 2017 at 2:34 PM ^

Athletes never count against more than one sport's scholarship limits.

There is a hierarchy for scholarship counts for multi-sport athletes. 1) Football. Anyone who competes on the football team who has a scholarship in any other sport counts as a scholarship football player. 2) Basketball. Same as with football, except players on a football scholarship do not count against the limit for basketball. 3) Women's volleyball. Same as above except for basketball players. 4). Next in line are ice hockey, field hockey and perhaps more.

Note that we've had a player on a soccer scholarship practice with the football team. If he had played in a game, then he would have become a scholarship football player and would no longer count for soccer.

As far as academic scholarships go, if they are awarded by the school, they count as athletic scholarships for players. If they are awarded by an outside group, like the Kalamazoo Promise, then athletics can not be a factor in earnng the scholarship. Otherwise they would again count.

JBM

November 16th, 2017 at 2:34 PM ^

See wikipedia

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Division_I#Rules_for_multi-sport_ath…

he NCAA also has rules specifying the sport in which multi-sport athletes are to be counted, with the basic rules being:[54]

  • Anyone who participates in football is counted in that sport, even if he does not receive financial aid from the football program. An exception exists for players at non-scholarship FCS programs who receive aid in another sport.[55]
  • Participants in basketball are counted in that sport, unless they also play football.
  • Participants in men's ice hockey are counted in that sport, unless they also play football or basketball.
  • Participants in both men's swimming and diving and men's water polo are counted in swimming and diving, unless they count in football or basketball.
  • Participants in women's (indoor) volleyball are counted in that sport unless they also play basketball.
  • All other multi-sport athletes are counted in whichever sport the school chooses.

Goggles Paisano

November 16th, 2017 at 1:48 PM ^

No idea what the rule is, but Universities strive for high integrity.  Circumventing the system to take funds from the acedemic pool to give to the athletic pool, just for the sake of having a "better" team runs afoul of the high ethics Universities strive for.  

 

justingoblue

November 16th, 2017 at 1:50 PM ^

I don't have the specific NCAA rule handy but basically once they're considered a scholarship athlete there has to be some objective basis for the academic scholarship or it counts against the athletics budget.

So a school could offer everyone with a 3.5 high school GPA five grand but they can't "randomly" award 20/20 scholarships to the hockey players.

A State Fan

November 16th, 2017 at 1:52 PM ^

Never been involved in the process at all, but I'm pretty sure if a kid comes on any official or maybe even unofficial visit (ie is being recruited by the school), then there are very strict scholarship rules for them. You cannot give a kid an academic scholarship in that case, he'd still count against the football cap. 

Also, I'd assume if the kid is not coming in on the football scholarship he'd be held to higher admission standards. NCAA has a sliding scale of GPA and ACT/SAT scores. A large number of athetes would not be in college at all if it wasn't for that.

The Mad Hatter

November 16th, 2017 at 2:39 PM ^

are successful at D1 schools sometimes.  They might not have the talent or conditioning to get a football scholarship to Michigan, but they were smart enough to get in under the normal admissions guidelines (which I can assure you are a helluva lot more stringent today than in 1995).

I wouldn't be surprised to see more PWO's on the field in the Harbaugh era. 

BlueinOK

November 16th, 2017 at 1:58 PM ^

For scholarships, it gets very interesting. There's some scholarship aid that isn't coming from the athletic department, but counts toward the scholarship number (I'm talking about when you split scholarships at the lower tier sports below basketball and football). For the most part, all scholarship money awarded counts toward the athletic scholarship...There are some exceptions if the student-athlete is a very good student. I know at my last school, we had a player of a full ride, but only like 0.8 counted toward athletics because he was exempt based on his very high GPA and ACT from his previous school. That helps the scholarship money go farther and maybe you can take the other 0.2 to go toward another player. For some of the lower tier sports, that's a lot. There's a ton more to it than that, but I'd go into full compliance mode and probably lose everyone reading this. 

ESNY

November 16th, 2017 at 2:24 PM ^

But that is a budget/financing issue.  The question is could you exceed the 85 player scholarship limit for football by handing out academic scholarships to players that otherwise would essentially be considered a walk-on.  If I recall correctly, any aid received by a member of the team would count against the maximum number of scholarship athletes allowed.  So you for football, there is a max of 85 students on scholarship, athetic or otherwise, on a team.  

BlueinOK

November 16th, 2017 at 3:42 PM ^

No. You can't go over 85 regardless of where the aid is coming from. Even if a player is on scholarship from another sport, it still counts for football as a full scholarship (football and basketball can't split scholarships)

Dylan

November 16th, 2017 at 2:00 PM ^

1) It appears as though there are many rules to this that I don't specifically know.

2) Even the shadiest of shady schools would not want that look at all.

JTGoBlue

November 16th, 2017 at 4:12 PM ^

Over all other students through academic merit only. That's tough to do when you are also dedicated to making a D1 squad. I'm not a subject matter expert, but that's how I understand it.

ShadowStorm33

November 16th, 2017 at 4:54 PM ^

What I’ve been wondering about is walk-ons. If a student on academic scholarship wants to walk on, does he have to give up his scholarship or else count against the team limit (e.g. 85 for football)?

CriticalFan

November 17th, 2017 at 1:11 AM ^

Why doesn't a school like Kansas hide 40-odd extra basketball recruits on their football scout team/two-deep? it's not like they are using the players to win at football.