OT: The Myth of the Sports Scholarship

[zamzman]

http://www.chronicle.com/article/Th...ndMa29SNV9CdWRTOXBCVmk2TmZGRk1QNzdIZnZBY0FJTQ

I thought this was very interesting. It discusses the (partial) scholarships of the non-revenue sports. If you're not a football, basketball, or volleyball player, you probably won't get a full scholarship. I knew some sports gave out half-scholarships and such, but this really shows how mercenary the non-revenue sports programs have to be to compete.

So that's the cost to the football coaches $10M/year salaries and the gold-plated toilets in the football locker room.

 

[redroofer]

Football spends the most for sure and that's because they cover the cost for all minor sports, if they didn't everything would be tax payer funded...not at Nebraska. This football program is always misunderstood by most fans but cut cost at football and say goodbye to all other sports. Even soccer, softball, swimming, rifle, bowling would not be around without football, all those numbers in football mean title 9 numbers for non paying women sports.

 

[Cloud@Heart]

I didn't read the article ( I Will eventually), but I find it amazing that Nebraska has between 30 and 40 wrestlers on the team, busting their asses for at least 3/4 of the year, and yet they only have 9.9 scholarships to use. A big time wrestling recruit rarely gets a full athletic scholarship, and they absolutely should in my opinion.....even if their sport isn't netting a profit for the school.

 

[anon_umk0ifu6vj6zi]

I didn't read the article ( I Will eventually), but I find it amazing that Nebraska has between 30 and 40 wrestlers on the team, busting their asses for at least 3/4 of the year, and yet they only have 9.9 scholarships to use. A big time wrestling recruit rarely gets a full athletic scholarship, and they absolutely should in my opinion.....even if their sport isn't netting a profit for the school.

Baseball is the same way. It's a joke.

 

[c2o]

I'm pretty sure that there is not a football locker room in this world with gold-plated toilets.
Maybe some have those french sounding things that squirt water upside your booty but I don't think they're gold-plated.

 

[zamzman]

I get that NCAA athletics is socialist in nature. Football brings in the money, but the players get just a fraction of it, while the rest goes to the other programs and "overhead". All the money going to the things surrounding the football program, just so that we can match or beat everyone else in NCAA football... the coaches salaries, all the staff, the administration, all the bells and whistles... I wish the players got some more of it and there was a limit placed on the rest of it. This system is so corrupt with all the boosters, bowl games, administrators who benefit from the players. Kind of like the NFL expecting taxpayers to pay for stadiums so that player salaries and owners profits in a monopoly go sky-high. They can afford to pay for their own stadiums out of all the money they're making, but demand the tax breaks just because they can.

Rant over. But the article was interesting in a non-ranting kind of way.

 

[ru4nu2win]

You are born and you die that's guaranteed. Everything else is negotiable.

 

[mwulf]

I'm pretty sure that there is not a football locker room in this world with gold-plated toilets.
Maybe some have those french sounding things that squirt water upside your booty but I don't think they're gold-plated.

get a bidet it will change your life

 

[Cornicator]

Baseball is the same way. It's a joke.

Baseball is the worst IMO. There are baseball players at Bellevue University with better scholarships than kids at Nebraska or Northwestern. It's slightly absurd.

 

[Tuco Salamanca]

I think the article is a bit over the top. My oldest graduated from a private university where the tuition and room and board rate is about $38,000/year. She received a 50% athletic scholarship and the rest was paid for by academic scholarships. Every parent on her club team is and was well aware of the recruiting game, the low balling of the offer by the coach etc. the minimum number of scholarships available. In the story, it read like the family was surprised when they found out swimming scholarships were low? All anyone has to do is look at an NCAA website to see the number of swimmers on a team and the max amount of scholarships a school has to divide up. Hell ask one of the other families on the club team or gasp the coach.

We spent quite a bit of money so my kids could play club sports. Both have gone to college on scholarship. We could have just put that money in a 529 or some other investment vehicle, but my kids got to travel all over the United States and compete against elite athletes. They made friends that they have stayed in contact with, they know kids on college teams all over the country. We got to spend countless hours driving to and from practices and events just talking. So to me the experience was more valuable than saving a couple of bucks and succeeding at an elite level will help immensely as they continue through their careers.

Point being, most everyone I ever met knew that the Olympic sports weren't going to yield your kid the golden ticket of a full athletic scholarship, those who didn't know, were either kidding themselves, to naive, or simply didn't do any research.

 

[jeans15]

Being a college basketball player is the most optimal athlete to be in college, imo.

 

[DonlugoQ]

Wouldn't a 31 on the ACT pretty much get a full academic scholarship at most public universities?

 

[c2o]

Wouldn't a 31 on the ACT pretty much get a full academic scholarship at most public universities?

I don't think so.

But I didn't get a 31.
So I'm probably wrong.

 

[Mr.Scary13]

Baseball is the worst IMO. There are baseball players at Bellevue University with better scholarships than kids at Nebraska or Northwestern. It's slightly absurd.

Baseball definitely gets screwed. I was given a "full ride scholarship" in baseball and it was an equivalent of 90% of everything paid for. We had 5 guys on the team with this, with some getting 50% on down to some only getting books paid for.

 

[cidsports]

Nearly eight million kids played high-school sports last year, the highest number ever. But just 170,000 athletes — about 2 percent of those who compete in high school — receive a sports scholarship, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

 

[Tuco Salamanca]

Nearly eight million kids played high-school sports last year, the highest number ever. But just 170,000 athletes — about 2 percent of those who compete in high school — receive a sports scholarship, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

The only relevant number is how many of the 8 million wanted to play their sport in college. Many kids play sports in high school for the social aspect or because it's expected in their communities.

Our high school football team has 60 kids on varsity another 100 spread out On the sub varsity teams. I bet 100 of this kids are not pursuing a college scholarship. So the total number of participants is a skewed number.

 

[PeliniTheCrutch]

Wouldn't a 31 on the ACT pretty much get a full academic scholarship at most public universities?

Absolutely not. If the grades were excellent as well, then full tuition is a decent possibility, but certainly not a full scholarship in nearly all cases.