Do college athletes deserve a bigger share of the billions of dollars flowing into the five wealthiest conferences? And should the NCAA’s scholarship limits, which restrict athletic departments from financially assisting many athletes, be adjusted to meet more students’ needs?
Those were among the questions that a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill asked thousands of coaches last year as part of a study of their views on athletic scholarships.
Of the 500-plus coaches who responded, more than half saw flaws in the NCAA’s system for awarding athletic aid. Some said it turns coaches, who are often handed a small pot of money to distribute among dozens of athletes, into “used-car salesmen,” haggling with recruits and their parents over the scarce dollars that institutions commit to certain sports.
But many coaches opposed giving athletes more money, preferring to spread small awards among many students to reduce the risk of “overpaying” for athletes who don’t work out.
About one of every five coaches who responded to the survey approved of compensating players in lieu of scholarships, with fewer agreeing that athletes should be allowed a share of the revenue their teams generate.
More than half of the respondents, who included head coaches and assistant coaches in 10 popular men’s and women’s sports, said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the distribution of scholarship dollars among sports at their institutions. (Nine out of 10 respondents were from nonrevenue sports, including swimming, track and field, and wrestling, which have smaller scholarship budgets than those in football and basketball.)
The wealthiest athletic departments, spurred by lawsuits arguing that the NCAA’s scholarship limits violate federal antitrust laws, have committed to spend more money on athletic aid. But the survey responses tell a different story — one in which some coaches said they disregard the financial needs of many athletes, talking them into attending for the smallest amount of scholarship money they’ll accept.
Such moves raised ethical concerns among a handful of survey respondents, who offered their unfiltered views in exchange for a promise of anonymity.
“We are in the era of big TV money, big salaries, and big business,” said a men’s track coach in the Southeastern Conference. “Yet we are using approximately 10 percent of our total budgets for scholarships.”
Others suggested that athletic departments were shortchanging students to protect their own self-interests.
“If student-athlete welfare is truly important,” said a cross-country coach in the Atlantic Coast Conference, “why are we limiting opportunities for students to maximize financial opportunities” for colleges?
An ‘Archaic’ System
The NCAA allows coaches in just six sports — football, men’s and women’s basketball, women’s gymnastics, women’s tennis, and women’s volleyball — to guarantee full scholarships to their athletes.
In more than a dozen other sports — including baseball, lacrosse, and soccer — many athletes receive partial scholarships, which often don’t come close to covering their full cost of attendance.
The NCAA also places restrictions on the amount of academic or other non-athletic aid that athletes may receive. The limits, some of which have been in place for decades, are designed to promote competitive balance and help control costs.
If the NFL only needs a 53-man roster plus seven practice players, why does college football need 85 full-scholarship players?
Jonathan A. Teich, an assistant director of development at High Point University, conducted the survey as part of his master’s-program research at Chapel Hill.
Coaches who responded were critical of colleges that had found ways to provide more aid to athletes outside of sports scholarships. A wrestling coach in the Big Ten Conference lamented that many universities give in-state tuition waivers or large financial-aid packages to complement their athletic aid, providing athletes with an unfair advantage in recruiting.
“You hate to keep scholarships away from student-athletes,” the wrestling coach wrote, “but perhaps there is a set limit worth of scholarships and academic aid a team can get.”
Many coaches complained about the NCAA’s “archaic” scholarship system, which places some of its greatest limits on sports that have the largest number of participants. Track and field, the second-most-popular boys’ high-school sport outside of football — and the most popular girls’ sport — receives a small number of scholarships relative to its participants.
The average Division I track team has about 40 men’s and 40 women’s athletes. The NCAA allows teams to provide the equivalent of 18 scholarships for women and 12.6 for men, meaning that dozens of athletes get little or no athletic aid.
Football teams at the highest NCAA level, on the other hand, are allowed to give 85 full scholarships. That’s the equivalent of nearly four full rides for every starting position. The disparity galled many coaches who participated in the survey.
“If the NFL only needs a 53-man roster plus seven practice players,” wrote a women’s track coach in the Big 12 Conference, “why does college football need 85 full-scholarship players?”
Several coaches proposed reducing football scholarships to 65, which would still give full rides to a 22-man starting squad and roughly two back-up players at each position. Such a change, which is in line with what lower-level Division I football programs are allowed to offer, would help athletic departments free up money for talented athletes in other sports.
It would also lead to a less frustrating distribution of aid, said one Big Ten coach.
“To give an athlete a full ride to be a practice player in one sport while asking an all-American in another sport to pay 50 percent of his bill,” the coach said, “makes little sense.”
‘Earning Your Money’
Many coaches said they would like more scholarships but not necessarily more fulls. They said the partial-scholarship model works to their benefit.
It eliminates the “wastefulness” of every athlete’s receiving a full award, said one Big Ten swimming coach, who proposed eliminating full scholarships in all sports. “That way we could cut out all the athletes who are undeserving of a full scholarship.”
When athletes are guaranteed a full award upfront, one SEC track coach said, some “just quit working and sit on their money.”
Awarding partial scholarships allows coaches to try out a variety of athletes without making much of a financial commitment, the SEC coach said. Those scholarships also let players work their way up the ladder.
“This creates a healthy atmosphere of earning your money on the team,” he said. “Not the everyone-gets-a-trophy mentality that has made athletes soft.”
Many coaches proposed ideas for simplifying scholarships or tying them solely to educational costs. A softball coach in the Big Ten Conference suggested that most scholarships be tuition-only, in part so more athletes have to shoulder part of the cost of college.
“It’s important that players and families have skin in the game,” she said. “Anything which is free is diminished in value.”
Mr. Teich, the researcher, proposed nine alternative scholarship models for coaches to consider, borrowing several ideas from Kate Kantor, a fellow master’s student in North Carolina’s sports-administration program. Two of the most popular ideas, supported by half or more of the coaches, would allow athletic departments to allocate scholarships based on the average roster size for each sport, formulas that would give many coaches more aid to offer.
Despite their support for new approaches, coaches seemed resigned to the current system, which one ACC baseball coach said favored university cost containment over the needs of players.
In the current system, he wrote, “I see few advantages for the student-athletes."— b.w.
