Blog / Sports Scholarship or Payment for Play?

College sports scholarships in the US have traditionally always been only for student-athletes to pay for a strict criteria of academic related costs. Tuition and fees, room and board and books are the items that the fortunate can hope to help them through their time at college. This was until October when the NCAA brought in a host of new reforms, one of which being to allow colleges to give their student-athletes an annual stipend amount of $2,000 for miscellaneous costs incurred for their general living expenses, which many feel adds up to a true ‘full-ride’ scholarship.

This scholarship rule change has brought mixed reactions from people involved in college sport. Some say it is a long overdue reform that the NCAA should of sanctioned years ago, whilst others feel this is just the start of a change of thinking from the NCAA towards paying student-athletes to play.  Although NCAA president Mark Emmert insists that this is not a stepping stone onto larger financial reforms, stating that “When you move from that model to a model where the students who play the games are paid, well now you don't have student athletics anymore. We already have that. That's the NFL and the NBA and Major League Baseball.”   It is hard to argue that this change from the NCAA will not bring with it its own complications.

One such complication being that this rule change is voluntary for each conference and college as the extra financial cost will be their choice and burden.   Chris Massaro, Athletics Director at Sun Belt conference member Middle Tennessee State believes that this will cost between $300,000-400,000 for each college to spread out amongst its chosen student-athletes.  He and many believe that although the NCAA have stated that this an optional addition that they can choose, this is not strictly right as he and others will be forced to implement the new changes in order to compete with the more affluent colleges.

So this leaves a dilemma for many institutions who do not wish to see the widening of the gap between conferences across the country get worse.  So in times of economic restraint, colleges will be forced to shift their resources from one area to another, but what will be interesting is to see where that shift comes from?  It is unclear yet whether this rule change also encompasses the Title IX ruling or whether less popular sports programs will feel the pinch but we shall see?

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