Here's an example. My son plays with a kid who is committed to Vandy. His dad told me "when the time comes, we will take whatever is better -- if the financial aid we can get is a better deal than the baseball scholarship, we'll take the financial aid." So in that case, if the financial aid is better, that kid will be signing a financial aid agreement, not a baseball scholarship. If there is a photo op at school and he is wearing a Vandy hat and jersey, should people bite their tongue because he is not signing an NLI?
What about players going to service academies? They don't sign an NLI -- they are on exactly the same deal as every other student at those schools. Should Army, Navy, and Air Force commits be allowed in the photo ops for kids signing with colleges?
I agree that kids committing to play as walk-on, academic, or athletic, etc. should be allowed to have there moment.
But the sample you cite here is concerning. Vandy is an SEC school and has to abide by SEC rules. But they are manipulating the player you know. Instead of giving him whichever is most (academic or athletic), why not give the player both. They can, some schools will tell you they can't, but they (private schools) absolutely can pair academic money with athletic money in the players first year if the player has a HS GPA of 3.5 in core classes, 1200 SAT, or 26 ACT.
Some schools may not have the funding, but recently it came to light that Tim Corbin is making over $2mil/year at Vandy, so they have the funding for the baseball team. Here is why they won't do it. SEC has rules as do the rest of the P5 that guarantees athletic scholarships for 4 years. It makes it easier for them to shuffle players off the roster if they don't have "baseball" money. They don't have to worry about the player staying at school and taking up baseball money.
I too know some players committed to Vandy and they don't belong there academically. They will get baseball money. If they don't pan out on the field, they will be told they can stay at school, but won't be part of the baseball team. They will most likely leave because they came to play baseball and don't have Vandy ( the school with the highest average SAT scores in the country) academic aspirations.
Other players will take academic money, and if they don't pan out on the field, they simply are not part of the team anymore. This is why other schools are very upset with the way Vandy is able to manipulate the system. Most SEC schools have to recruit within their own state because they simply don't have the ability to lure athletes from around the country and churn them the way Vandy can.
By having a pool of lesser academic athletes on baseball scholarship and a pool of academic baseball players on academic/need scholarships Vandy is able to manipulate the system unlike any other in the SEC and few in College baseball. Again, if the player in question warrants baseball money and academic money, why not give him both?
Because then they wouldn't be able to commit 20 players every year for 35 roster spots.
