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Established 2007
Last Updated
January 23rd, 2008 |
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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 U13 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, 1999) 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 and some
programs offer as few as 2.1 scholarships
for the men's program.
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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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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Here's a list of similar articles about
soccer, colleges, scholarships, etc. that
you might find interesting.
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