Multi-year scholarship option approved by NCAA

The next evolution in affecting the intercollegiate athletics landscape around football scholarships.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/coll...r-scholarships-survives-close-vote/53137194/1

207 out 300 votes from D-1 universities were required to repeal the multi-year scholly option that was put into effect in October. 205 votes came in.

Boy - I'd love to see the list of yea's vs. nay's in this one.

So, universities now have the option of offering single year or 2, 3 or 4 year scholaships to athletes.

That should make the recruiting world a little more interesting.

I don't think it's going to matter much. Most everyone will be offered 4 year schollies. If it's clear that a player isn't ever going to make an impact, most of them will still leave of their own accord. I think most who leave now aren't told "we won't renew", but are just told they're never going to see meaningful snaps and then they want to leave.

I think this will have more of an impact down south!!
Did they re approve the $2000 stipend??

I don't see it that way at all. Having 1 year scholarship terms, and only 1 year terms, is about as close as you can get to "free agency" on a yearly basis, in the so called "amateur" world of NCAA athletics, and I think it's been a hidden problem all along. I think having the option to offer 2, 3, 4 or 5 years of scholarship on a single scholarship contract can be, and should be, hugely powerful in recruiting and very much opens up the opportunities out there for athletes, and helps level out the recruiting field.

If a school is going to choose to diminish it's own value in education, and as an institution, by handing these things out like candy on Halloween, let them.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. College football can be a very dirty business. Big time recruiting, whether it be ncaa basketball, football, or in the fortune 500 business world for a hotshot, is a dirty business.

All you've got is your reputation. It's all you've got. How those multiple year scholarship options are handled, is quickly going to establish reputations out there.

I would love to see the voting breakdown on this thing. The list of approving institutions vs. disapproving. I have no idea where we stand on this thing, or if we were a vote or an abstention.

Pretty sure it's up for appeal, re-vote, whatever stage it's at the next set of meetings in April. The stipend was approved, then repealed and denied and is up for re-write and then a new vote.

I think the stipend is a bad idea. Terrible precedent to set.

But the multiple year scholarships are in effect, and some schools have arleady put them into effect retroactively to the NLI's signed for 2012.

This is what I"m talking about. I agree with the Virginia coach. I hope that we at UConn are of the same mindset.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...-scholarships/2012/02/02/gIQA1IFwkQ_blog.html

The problems with the 1 year scholarship term, and yearly renewals, arose when football programs begin using athletes like free-agents, rather than students. Those football programs are going to have trouble in this new system, after learning to manipulate the system for their own benefit at the cost of the student in the system which has existed since 1973, up until now in 2012.

If a school is going to make the choice, to go to offering all scholarships, as four year terms.......I find that very risky business. I think that having the option of giving a multiple year scholarship is a very powerful thing though, and that student-athletes that are being highly pursued and pressured in the recruiting process, now have something to really work with to turn the cards in their favor.

When you don't really allow the kids to work, not having a stipend pretty much assures that kids that don't have any money will break rules in order to have cash for spending / tattoos / cell phone bills. I actually think that a stipend takes away some of the incentives to misbehave. The NCAA just has to be smart and keep the stipend cap at a low level so it doesn't become a bidding process.

The stipend. Very intersting times we live in folks. It's so damn confusing. Amateurism, yet a stipend is clearly pay to play. I'm against the stipend. Very much so. There are other ways to handle this. There's no reason why student athletes can't get paid for work they do, and assign them jobs at a university to do, that won't interfere with academics or athletics, and then pay them for working. Doing that, though, takes a lot of effort and brain power from people in charge. Much easier to just cut a check........

I'm not against the multi-year scholarships, and I'm relieved to find out that my alma mater appears to hold my same kind of beliefs.

override to 2011-97 section in the link below is the multi-year scholly issue that went before the NCAA in october and was just approved in a re-vote.

Interesting to read the protests by the likes of Rutgers and Boise State regarding these things. Rutgers is a mess and predictably concerned about budgetary issues as they're bleeding money like a stuck pig, and is also concerned about Boise is clear that they do not approve the recruiting situations that will occur when not all institutions are offering the same things with scholarships. Rutgers clearly would have added the issue of coaches leaving......if this thing was done now, instead of in October....as other institutions voice in this document. As for Boise - clearly worried about having to offer their 4 year degree vs. other schools in recruiting.

You're joining the big east now Boise, time to get the whole school cranked up to the same level the football program is at!!!!

http://www.bgsfirm.com/images/stories/2k_overrides.pdf

It takes more than effort and brain power. It takes oversight to make sure the players are showing up, are doing the job, and are being paid properly.

That means money and manpower. It's easier to avoid abuses of the system if you simply give them a stipend. There are also a limited number of jobs for students on campus, and the student athletes on scholarship need that job less than the kids taking out $100-$200k loans. But you know the players are going to get preferential treatment for the jobs they apply for, which isn't fair to other kids who also need that money.

Do you let the kids work off campus? Don't think that will be a nightmare to oversee?

A scholarship is already pay for play when you think about it, the stipend is just an extension of the scholarship. If it keeps kids from taking "illegal benefits" I'm alright with it.

I don't see the logic in this type of thinking. Give the kid the stipend because he needs it, not because you think a kid is going to turn down an envelope with 10k cash in it. I know wouldn't have turned down cash money like that between 18-22, if I wasn't being asked to do anything against the law. To be clear I said against the law, not against the rules. You ain't going to jail for accepting an envelope with cash.

All very good questions. I think it's a lot easier to let kids take jobs off campus and unaffiliated with the school, and simply require that they turn in their paystubs and corresponding timesheets (proof of actually working), and W2's to the university, and then let the IRS handle the rest.

There's absolutely no reason why your average non-athlete student can't take a job doing anything they want to help pay for school, only one reason why scholarship athlete recruits should be any different - and it's got nothing to do with the student or athletics part of being a student athlete, and everything to do with a university's alumni and athletic financial support system.

What you run into there, with athletes as students, is the booster problem. Players getting jobs at car dealerships and driving around in new cars for example..........that kind of incentive for a recruit to come to a school, is pretty powerful....and not allowed........how do you oversee that?

No, I think that university jobs, with university paychecks, is the way to go. Every cafeteria needs dishwashers, for example, and every building needs maintenance guys to sweep floors and clean out garbage cans, and there's really more motivating to make your education mean something, than doing jobs like that.

But the issue I'm focused on here, is the multiple year scholarships. I think it's a very good idea, and puts a lot of meaning back into the student part of the student-athlete.

Factoring a cash allowance into a scholarship is a bad idea. If you do that, every student at every university that provides scholarships, needs to have the same cash allowance factored into their time at the university. A stipend, separate from a scholarship, can be selectively provided to students in a student body. But it's a terrible precedent to set. Much better to allow provisions for working.

all of this stuff, is why the Ivy league stopped scholarships in the 1950s.

I think scholarships are a fantastic way for kids to get an education, that otherwise wouldn't be available, and i'm all for them, and the multiple year option. The value of a 4 year education at an institution, just in the past month, has become a real tool in recruiting, that was never an option for the students being recruitied to play sports, had before.

The underlying, fundamental problem to it all - I've pointed out recently around here, was outlined very nicely by Supreme Court Justice Byron White, in his dissent of the Court's decision to uphold Sherman anti-trust in favor of the Oklahoma Board of Regents and University of Georgia lawsuits brought to court, regarding the way that the NCAA had managed college football broadcasting from 1938-1984.

Ever since that time, the student part, of student-athlete has been a constant battle to maintain importance, and the concept of amateurism and academics in college athletics has fallen subservient to the market forces of media broadcasting.

And there are adults who need those jobs, as well as other students who are taking out loans to pay for school who need those jobs.

I believe those jobs should go to the kids paying/borrowing their way through school. Not to the guys who have room, board, tuition, and books paid for, and really are looking for discretionary dollars.

Athletes get priority when it comes to scheduling classes, they get free academic support, they get clothes, they get a lot of benefits. At least let the jobs go to the kids who don't get any of those added benefits.

As with every other benefit selectively provided to scholarship athletes and not the rest of the student body, so can jobs.