One-year scholarships bother me. The standard recruiting pitch all but guarantees four years, at least verbally. Until 2012, NCAA rules prohibited multi-year scholarships.
Why are multi-year scholarships important? The NCAA’s own words: “Allowing these schools to award scholarships for longer than a single year gives student-athletes greater assurance their education will continue even if they suffer an injury, their athletics performance does not live up to expectations or the coaching staff changes.”
Kudos to the NCAA for admitting the obvious, even if these sentences are buried in obscurity on its website.
Recently, Cal football player James Grisom learned how shady one-year scholarships can be.
On June 25th, Grison received an email that “notified him his scholarship would not be renewed for the 2014-15 season.” Prior to termination notice, Grisom received no indication from Cal coaches or administrators this was a possibility.
This is perfectly within NCAA rules, which astonishingly gives schools until July 1—a terrible time to a college student to find another financial aid package or to transfer.
If a coach wants to terminate a player’s scholarship and does a few days after the season ends, I would somewhat understand. But sending an email seven months after the last game is heartless.
Cal head football coach Sonny Dykes was asked to comment on why Grisom’s scholarship was not renewed. Here’s his written statement:
“We value the contributions of every member of our team and any time we have available scholarships we award them to deserving student-athletes, but we also are limited to 85 scholarships and must manage those accordingly.”
Translated, basically: We have just 85 football scholarships and I was hired to win so don’t worry how the sausages get made. And blame the NCAA for only giving college football 85 full scholarships.
Last summer, I spoke to a Division 1 basketball coach about multi-year scholarships. He said his school had not offered any, but reasoned that he would never take a scholarship away from a player for performance-related issues. I asked why he had not offered multi-year scholarships. His response, “Interestingly, no recruit or his parents have ever asked.” Note to self: Tell every recruit I know to ask for 4-year scholarships!
I suppose firing amateur athletes is just another job hazard of being a “student athlete.” But, amateur sports is not a business per the NCAA in like every press release and technically these athletes are students, not employees. It’s all bogus. They cut players because it saves money—and because they can.
Not, let’s step outside NCAAspeak and return to reality. Think about when a coach is fired. The new coach comes in, almost always with a higher salary and greater expectations. The quickest way to turn around a program is to upgrade its personnel. After all, the current players contributed to the previous coach’s demise.
This is exactly what happened when Kansas hired Charlie Weis to replace Turner Gill after going 2-10. Weis immediately got rid of an astounding 29 players. Weis proceeded to go 6-22 overall and 1-18 in Big 12 Conference play. He was fired a few weeks ago.
This is what Weis said during the Big 12 media days this summer: “I miscalculated the impact of when I threw 29 guys off the team the first year I was there. I walked in there; there were a lot of issues I felt had to be resolved and one of the ways to resolve them was to get rid of them.”
Yes, not winning causes a lot of off-the-field issues to surface.
A few schools are finally recognizing the unfairness of one-year scholarships. Last week, the University of South Carolina announced it would provide four-year scholarships for headcount sports (basically football and men’s and women’s basketball).
Let’s hope more schools step up like South Carolina. Here are my suggestions for reforming the one-sided scholarship system:
1) Scholarships should be guaranteed for 4-years, at least in the so-called power conferences. As long as a player fulfills his academic and athletic requirements, follows the school’s conduct code and obeys the law, the scholarship stays in tact.
2) Change NCAA rules to allow schools to deal with the issue of unproductive players in an honorable way. As Sonny Dykes alluded to, his job is to allocate 85 scholarships to the best players. This meant making tough choices. Allow athletic departments to “eat” a certain number of scholarships per year without being subject to NCAA scholarship limitations. And then go sign someone who they think can help them win.
3) If a player is on a one-year scholarship and the coach does not want to not renew, this should done with 10 days of the season’s end. This increases the chance that the student can make alternative plans, whether it’s transferring to another school and/or finding financial aid. Still, schools should be required to guarantee an additional scholarship year in the event other opportunities do not materialize. Or, if a financial aid package or scholarship at another institution falls short, the athletic should mitigate any losses.
Think about when a coach is terminated. His lawyer or agent likely negotiated a severance package that pays additional years of salary, often worth millions. College athletes are not represented so they get nothing. Guaranteeing athletic scholarships for four years is the right thing to do. It ensures that promises (often made verbally by a previous coach) are not broken. Just as important, it gives motivated, ahem, STUDENT athletes the best opportunity to graduate.
