Academic money is earned independently of baseball at D III's; if you're looking at a private school, most have a lot of "grants" that many students will qualify for and the coaches will know about those. If you're looking at a public D III, academic money isn't easy to come by without pretty impressive academic credentials (something like a GPA over 3.5 and SAT's over 1250). Often the sales pitch at a public D III in Virginia is that what you'll pay with no aid (somewhere in the $12,000-$15,000 range), will be about the same or less than you'd pay at a private school, with aid, athletic, academic or both, at an out of state school.
D III's have no NLI and nothing is "signed". The commitment is normally a verbal commitment from the coach that the player has a guaranteed roster spot his freshman year, but not all schools do that. Be sure and ask exactly what the coach's commitment means. Players can change their minds at will, so D III coaches kind of hold their breath till they see who actually arrives in the fall.
This is a little early in the D III recruiting year as most wait till the dust settles with the D I's to see who committed where before jumping full bore into recruiting, so getting calls now is a pretty good sign.
D II's follow the same process as D I's, using the NLI. Our experience was the coach made a specific verbal offer over the phone, and followed that up in writing, and gave our son a reasonable time within which to respond. The NLI isn't actually signed until November. If they're paying $$$, your son will have a spot in the team at least the first year. Scholarships are renewable each year at the option of the school, but most will continue it for the full 4/5 years. Schools don't often fail to renew; if they don't like what they see, they tend to communicate that with a lack of playing time and players get the message and transfer.
