I’ve decided I want a retroactive rebate. Even with scholarships I had to pay 25% of college for five years for one and 25% of college for four years for the other.
So here’s what most everyone on here thinks about scholarships
more athletic $$ = better athlete
One to watch. Could be famous some day. Coaches will take care of him, he’s a franchise player. Lots of playing time. Very desirable if he goes in the portal.
Here’s what Imma saying:
more athletic $$ = loss of control
Valuable up until he’s not (injury, mental health, grades, family issues, behavior, etc). Always subject to replacement or benching for whatever reason, or no reason at all. No protection.
In a world where <5% of college players get drafted, why give away your power unless you have no other option? There is far more academic money than athletic money available, go for the bag that you can hold, instead of having to accept pieces from someone else’s bag.
So many people here blinded by the system of which they are part. They not only can’t see the other side, they refuse to acknowledge it exists.
@SpeedDemon posted:So here’s what most everyone on here thinks about scholarships
more athletic $$ = better athlete
One to watch. Could be famous some day. Coaches will take care of him, he’s a franchise player. Lots of playing time. Very desirable if he goes in the portal.
Here’s what Imma saying:more athletic $$ = loss of control
Valuable up until he’s not (injury, mental health, grades, family issues, behavior, etc). Always subject to replacement or benching for whatever reason, or no reason at all. No protection.
In a world where <5% of college players get drafted, why give away your power unless you have no other option? There is far more academic money than athletic money available, go for the bag that you can hold, instead of having to accept pieces from someone else’s bag.
So many people here blinded by the system of which they are part. They not only can’t see the other side, they refuse to acknowledge it exists.
In almost every case the coach/management has the greater leverage. The players have very little unless they are a start player. Once a scholarship player is cut I’d bet 99% of the time they transfer, whether on academic or athletic money. Here’s the thing you are missing, very few kids are getting 100% academic money. So once they are cut, the rest of the funding and support goes away. So yes, you might be guaranteed 4 years of that academic money, but if you are suddenly paying full out of state price the cost becomes too great.
In a perfect world a kid would be able to stay at their school and finish their degree without baseball, but it doesn’t happen often.
So what are you saying?
Should all players get equal athletic scholarships? Or else be able to sue? That doesn't even work with academic merit scholarships.
Should coaches not be allowed to cut players? I'm actually not opposed to that, but it's not a rule currently - or actually, it is a rule at P4s for players on scholarship, but they can get players to leave by telling them they won't get playing time.
Should everyone get equal playing time? That would be absurd.
Where do you draw the line? Coaches have to be able to make decisions about their teams, no matter how unfair someone might think such decisions are.
@TPM posted:Not going to argue with you. It costs more money to bring in an out of state player. If a program is not fully funded, and they want to bring in an out of state player, they have to have options on how to fund.
Woman's softball went from 12 to 25. but remains an equivalency sport. Will see how that works out.
The term "equivalency" sport should be going away in 2025 as ALL sports will now be head count sports set to their new roster sizes.
I never said an out of state player doesn't cost more; when a college/university "funds" sports they will set the amount of $$$ (split 50-50 between men and women) and that will dictate what they fund per men's and women's sports.
This is no different than today with head count and equivalency sports except there will be no cap per sport other than roster size and COA starting Fall 2025.
My son is getting full out-of-state tuition, fees, books and meals as an equivalency player this year and his housing will be covered by a portion of his NIL (taxed) and Alston award (not taxed).
If he stays and plays next year I would imagine he *could* get 100% COA and maybe less or no NIL but who knows? I'm sure the school won't fund 100% of all sports as that would be a huge cost. So maybe he'll get the same deal next year? It really depends on the school's total sports budget and how they want to distribute it while still adhering to Title IX.
Seems to me this all comes down to your goals and keeping your eyes open with a bit of cynicism or critical thinking about what you are being sold by coaches and recruiting coordinators. I think that's been well laid out here in multiple topics on the board.
I asked why @adbono considered baseball money more valuable because I knew I had a specific idea of what I thought and wanted to know why he thought differently and I fully appreciate his response and found it entirely valid based on his interpretation of more valuable, as I find mine valid based on mine. Simply coming at the same concept from different places. Not an "Agree to Disagree" but more like 'Yeah, I see where you are coming from".
Unless you are the next coming, there will always be barriers to getting on the field, Upper-classmen, transfers, guys with more baseball money, coaches preferences, suffering grades... you can only control how hard you work, and for guys who are there to play baseball over academics, baseball money helps them with that, but I have no issue with them trying to move on to somewhere else to get a chance to play... thankfully that has been made more possible. For guys who are there and chose the school for the combination of baseball and their next 40, I think getting in the portal and trying to move on is probably not worth it and maybe it's time to hang them up and concentrate on your degree.
Again, different goals, different idea of which money is more valuable, which is just really all okay.
I appreciate your post @HSDad22. And for those that like to cast stones let me remind you that I am Volunteer College Coach. I volunteer my time and I am not compensated in any way. So any suggestion that my advice is based on receiving a paycheck is laughable. Furthermore I am, and always have been, a players’ advocate. I take some risk with some of the things I talk about on this forum but I do so to help those that don’t understand the process. A lot of gamesmanship goes on that most people just aren’t aware. Lots of bad decisions get made due to faulty or incomplete information. I use this forum to do my little part in getting the truth out when I see an opportunity. It’s absurd to suggest that I benefit personally from the content I post. And to tie that suggestion to a gender is just lunacy.
@HSDad22 posted:Unless you are the next coming, there will always be barriers to getting on the field, Upper-classmen, transfers, guys with more baseball money, coaches preferences, suffering grades... you can only control how hard you work, and for guys who are there to play baseball over academics, baseball money helps them with that, but I have no issue with them trying to move on to somewhere else to get a chance to play... thankfully that has been made more possible. For guys who are there and chose the school for the combination of baseball and their next 40, I think getting in the portal and trying to move on is probably not worth it and maybe it's time to hang them up and concentrate on your degree.
Again, different goals, different idea of which money is more valuable, which is just really all okay.
Agree with the above.
IMO, athletic is more valuable because coaches don't have to worry about students not keeping up minimum GPA requirements.
You most likely will see most top programs that fully fund use all of their 34 scholarships on their 34 players. You will more than likely see mid D1 programs blend scholarships. Academics still remain important, so keep encouraging your players to excell in the classroom.
JMO
@TerribleBPthrower posted:In almost every case the coach/management has the greater leverage. The players have very little unless they are a start player. Once a scholarship player is cut I’d bet 99% of the time they transfer, whether on academic or athletic money. Here’s the thing you are missing, very few kids are getting 100% academic money. So once they are cut, the rest of the funding and support goes away. So yes, you might be guaranteed 4 years of that academic money, but if you are suddenly paying full out of state price the cost becomes too great.
In a perfect world a kid would be able to stay at their school and finish their degree without baseball, but it doesn’t happen often.
Right! Coaches/managers do have great leverage. In fact, until very recently they had nearly perfect leverage.
And yes, of course, if someone is cut no doubt they'll look to move elsewhere or decide to hang up their cleats, depending on the situation. But a merit-based academic scholarship will give them more choices, right? Sure, if they want to continue chasing their baseball dream and there is an opportunity to do so, they can do that.
But 95% of college baseball players do not play beyond college.
95%
Just want to say thanks to everyone for the discussion.
I’m not going to respond to this thread any longer as I have nothing left to say.
Bye for now.
The House settlement was not approved today. Apparently the Judge raised a number of concerns but a major issue related to the NCAA trying to regulate and possibly limit reasons for NLI payments through consortiums.
This might raise questions about whether the NCAA moved prematurely to implement tentative settlement terms like roster and scholarship changes. More to develop but the concerns raised by the Judge appear to further increase the pressure and risks for the NCAA. Necessarily recruiting for 2025’s …ugh for players and coaches especially at the P4 level.
What does this mean?
The NCAA wanted to restrict (prohibit?) the giving of money to athletes by collectives, and instead to allow schools to pay the athletes directly out of 22% (the cap) of their revenue money. The judge said that banning collectives would restrict the amount of money an athlete could make: "Some people getting large amounts will no longer be able to get them."
The judge's issue seems to be that if they try to ban collectives, then they will have to enforce that ban, and the NCAA has always been incapable of enforcing bans on booster money, and some state attorneys general don't want to enforce those rules either.
@Dadof3 posted:What does this mean?
It means that, at present, the “settlement” requiring the NCAA to reduce baseball rosters to 34 and increase scholarships well beyond 11.7 isn’t enforceable. In a sense it means the NCAA had the plank on which they were/are standing when they indicated they would make these changes significantly sawed off behind them.
The judge who needs to approve the settlement is the same one who tried the O’Bannon case which found the NCAA liable to athletes for NIL. She knows the legal issues quite well and the background of the NCAA on the matters. Reports about her questioning of the NCAA attorney suggests she has healthy skepticism of their position.
Reporting indicates she is also concerned the settlement attempts to impact collegiate athletes well into the future (those currently in grade school) who are not parties to the suit.
At it’s core, it is not at all clear for incoming 25’s and beyond what scholarship expectations will be in place for coaches or players.
@infielddad posted:It means that, at present, the “settlement” requiring the NCAA to reduce baseball rosters to 34 and increase scholarships well beyond 11.7 isn’t enforceable. In a sense it means the NCAA had the plank on which they were/are standing when they indicated they would make these changes significantly sawed off behind them.
The judge who needs to approve the settlement is the same one who tried the O’Bannon case which found the NCAA liable to athletes for NIL. She knows the legal issues quite well and the background of the NCAA on the matters. Reports about her questioning of the NCAA attorney suggests she has healthy skepticism of their position.
Reporting indicates she is also concerned the settlement attempts to impact collegiate athletes well into the future (those currently in grade school) who are not parties to the suit.At it’s core, it is not at all clear for incoming 25’s and beyond what scholarship expectations will be in place for coaches or players.
Exactly. She was also the district court judge in the Alston case before it went to the 9th Circuit and then on to the Supreme Court.
The core problem is that the NCAA operated as a cartel for so long they seem to not be able to understand what a truly competitive, open market for college athletics would look like. They are so desperate to (1) cap and control athlete's compensation - including NIL, revenue sharing, scholarship funds, and (2) get anti-trust approval.
It's not going to happen.
I won't pretend to really know what I'm talking about when it comes to the NCAA, and I'm sure this post will show my ignorance to high level college sports. But from my naive perspective...
I only know that my wife has worked with the NCAA and says they are as corrupt as it gets because their focus is not on a student athlete's welfare, it's on the business of making money. To that end, I believe that they should be figuring out how to increase scholarship opportunities for as many athletes as possible, or in this specific case, as many baseball athletes across D1 as possible, making it possible for any school to increase scholarships, but they seem only focused on opportunities that will limit that to a select few.
On the surface, more scholarships, Good. How they are proposing it without a real plan of adopting it as fairly as possible or to include as many schools as possible, Not Good. If you can't support funding it in a fair manner, it shouldn't be proposed. You can't say, hey, you get to have 34 scholarships, now go figure out how to get the money on your own, or too bad.
Again, will state this before researching, so if it's wrong I will recant, the way schools would have to get the money to fund these scholarships seems to me an avenue for corruption and fraud as nobody does anything without wanting a piece of the pie.
IF you can help me figure out where that funding is proposed to come from, I'd appreciate pointing me in that direction, as I'm curious.
Thanks! Makes sense now.
@HSDad22 posted:I won't pretend to really know what I'm talking about when it comes to the NCAA, and I'm sure this post will show my ignorance to high level college sports. But from my naive perspective...
I only know that my wife has worked with the NCAA and says they are as corrupt as it gets because their focus is not on a student athlete's welfare, it's on the business of making money. To that end, I believe that they should be figuring out how to increase scholarship opportunities for as many athletes as possible, or in this specific case, as many baseball athletes across D1 as possible, making it possible for any school to increase scholarships, but they seem only focused on opportunities that will limit that to a select few.
On the surface, more scholarships, Good. How they are proposing it without a real plan of adopting it as fairly as possible or to include as many schools as possible, Not Good. If you can't support funding it in a fair manner, it shouldn't be proposed. You can't say, hey, you get to have 34 scholarships, now go figure out how to get the money on your own, or too bad.
Again, will state this before researching, so if it's wrong I will recant, the way schools would have to get the money to fund these scholarships seems to me an avenue for corruption and fraud as nobody does anything without wanting a piece of the pie.
IF you can help me figure out where that funding is proposed to come from, I'd appreciate pointing me in that direction, as I'm curious.
On the down low that was a rather EPIC post. Succinctly summarizes a lot of my conflicting feelings on this whole mess and has helped me organize and understand why I feel so uncomfortable with it all. Thank you HSDad22
@HSDad22 posted:On the surface, more scholarships, Good. How they are proposing it without a real plan of adopting it as fairly as possible or to include as many schools as possible, Not Good. If you can't support funding it in a fair manner, it shouldn't be proposed. You can't say, hey, you get to have 34 scholarships, now go figure out how to get the money on your own, or too bad.
11.7 isn't fully funded, or even close to fully funded across all D1s now. I don't think schools that can fund a full 34 or whatever it becomes should be help back by schools that can't or won't fund it. Whether that means having a "pro" college division or similar I don't know, but I say this as a parent with 2 kids on lower D1 teams who absoltely would not fund a full 34.
One thing I found out recently was one of the worse D1 teams over the last decade or longer actually is fully funded to 11.7. Not sure if that's new or has always been.
NCAA Settlement Case on hold: What it means for college baseball
The NCAA’s landmark settlement that would change the dynamic of college athletics and college baseball forever is on hold after the judge in the case, Claudia Wilken, questioned a portion of the settlement.
All parties involved in the proposed settlement will report back in a few weeks. Then, an agreement will be made, or this will potentially go to trial. The settlement going to trial would delay items such as revenue-sharing, roster limits, scholarship limits, and more for at least a couple of years. That does not include the potential- and likelihood- of an appeals process.
My pal Ross Dellenger has an excellent rundown of the higher-level items tied to this case, here.
In the updated settlement terms, boosters from schools/collectives would be prohibited from compensating athletes through endorsement deals. The settlement would have potentially reduced or eliminated such payments. Instead, schools could only pay players through a salary-cap/revenue-sharing system.
This aspect of the settlement causing pause from the judge should not come as a surprise. In the current climate of college athletics, it would be naive to think that the NCAA could set guardrails on what athletes can make from booster clubs and collectives.
The market sets the price point. So, if the market is willing to pay Player X a certain amount, how can the NCAA or any other entity safely say that player isn’t worth that amount of money? Again, the NCAA does not set the market value of a player. The schools and/or collectives do. Just like any form of business, what someone should be paid is almost always what the market is willing to pay.
Another aspect of the settlement that is causing pause and caught my attention is the idea that third-party endorsement deals, which would be part of a revenue-sharing model, would need to be submitted to a clearinghouse that would determine their validity.
Again, in this scenario, who is the person and/or entity judging the ‘validity’ of an endorsement deal? It goes back to the idea above of what the market is willing to pay. If Joe’s Taco Shack is willing to pay Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers $2 Million a year, who is to say that deal might not be valid or might just be overkill from a payment perspective? It boils down to what the third party is willing to pay.
It’s a basic argument that would hold much weight should this case go to trial.
We will soon find out if all parties agree on some of the amended settlement terms and if the judge feels like it should move forward. She has hesitations for now.
So, what does the decision to ‘pause’ the settlement mean for college baseball?
In essence … everything.
The 34-man roster limit and the potential to have unlimited scholarships on your roster are now held up as part of this settlement. Should a settlement be reached in the coming weeks, the changes would still go into effect in the fall of 2025. However, the settlement going to trial would delay those changes by at least a couple of years. A trial date would not be set until at least the middle of next year, and who knows how long the trial would last and how long the appeals process would follow.
It’s a turbulent time for college athletics, and ‘who knows’ on timelines is the last thing college baseball coaches or administrators want to hear. But that’s the reality for now.
The other thing to remember as part of this ‘hold’ is that conferences/institutions still have not determined how many scholarships they will provide for baseball under the current settlement. At least two power conferences told me last month that they would have a framework for what they’d allow before the early signing period in November, provided a final settlement was reached in this case. But now that the case is on hold, a decision may not come anytime soon. Coaches had already been stressed about making brash roster decisions on a whim. This clouds the situation even more. For what it’s worth, those same conferences expected their scholarship total to come in somewhere between 22-24, with the potential to add more down the road. There’s also the potential that leagues will let each program govern how many scholarships it wants to hand out.
College baseball will get more scholarships, and roster limits will be trimmed from 40 to 34. Now, we await the date this all begins. It could begin next fall. It also could stretch out two to three more years.
Just another day in modern college athletics.