Merit awards were required to meet certain tests, at least until a few years ago. Not sure it that changed. Need aid from the school was counted against the teams total until about 2016.
There really are no rules anymore. If a coach has 10 scholarships to give out but can also supplement it with need based aid, endowed scholarships, having the defense sponsored by a car dealership, it’s not really hard to get the whole team in for free. Joe Paterno’s son runs a booster group at Penn State. He said there really aren’t any rules and the whole point of the group is to funnel money to student athletes.
Maybe the Brown students are missing out and are being exploited, but I don’t think a court is going to make the Ivy schools give scholarships.
My daughter and her boyfriend were scholarship athletes (not full COA by any means) and they had to live with all the rules about not earning money from boosters, reporting all outside scholarships, earning merit scholarships, etc. They think the NIL rules, the transfer portal, the ability to get obscene amounts of money are ruining college sports.
The players have no loyalty, and the coaches don’t either. When watching the top schools play on tv, the announcers are constantly saying “Oh, he played for X school last year” or “She’s going off an All American season at Z school but transferred when the coach left.” Even professionals can’t change teams when a better offer comes along.
Some of it is using extra seasons from Covid, but some of it is getting more money from the new school and being able to play immediately after a transfer.
Yes, the collectives formed on behalf of (primarily) most P5 conference athletic programs are funneling obscene amounts of money to players with few meaningful rules. To make matters worse, the State laws governing NIL deals have zero enforcement mechanisms. Combine that with immediate transfer eligibility, and you get exactly what you describe – the Wild West. Basketball is an easy target given the fact that 1 or 2 players can significantly alter a teams fortune.
All that said, I do not think the Ivy players will prevail in court and force league-wide scholarship implementation.
As a parent of a prospective athlete, I’ll be glad when the 5th years have run out of eligibility. Their money counts against totals now, and 18 year olds don’t generally stack up well against 23 year olds.
The really twisted part is, that there even is any discussion about sports funding in the first place, in the context of affording post-secondary education (let alone law suits).
Here’s another “separation” the 1st amendment missed
But so is paying $80k/yr for higher education. Students in other countries don’t have to figure out how to pay that while US students do - merit scholarships, financial aid, talent scholarships, local scholarships, a rich grandparent? Whatever works to get the money.
My daughter had 10 types of scholarships, grants, and aid to pay for her college, including an athletic scholarship. If she’d gone to Brown, there would have been just need based aid (although that could have included a Pell grant, SEOG, and need based aid from the school so more than one line item on the bill).
Yes. And I think the main driver behind that ridiculously high, and ever-increasing, price tag is that European and Asian universities are educational institutions first and last; whereas private colleges here in the U.S. are really businesses that sell education (and prestige, depending on the school) and will charge as much as the consumer is willing to pay.
I’m not diminishing their quality of education or the opportunities and outcomes they provide - just saying they are businesses IMO.
But in Europe and Asia not every student gets to go to college even if they can afford it. Prince Harry didn’t go to college and he could have paid his way into many US colleges but not a lot of British ones.
Yes, we have a different system, and it includes sports and sports scholarships. At my daughter’s school, there were quite a few international students who attended that school to play sports and that was made possible by sports scholarships. Not so many Asians but Europeans and South Americans.
If I were asked to give current odds on who will prevail, I would favor the plaintiffs. But, that result won’t force Ivy league schools to offer scholarships, it would merely remove the league-wide prohibition.
An interesting “over a beer” question is, what would happen if Ivy League schools could unleash their endowments on men’s and women’s basketball scholarships? Small squads, so virtually no impact to their endowments. They might have to rename March Madness to Ivy Madness!
I’m not a fan of frivolous lawsuits in general- and perhaps this one is an egregious example-- but anything that shines a light on athletics in general and ends up pushing more transparency is a good thing for society in my opinion.
Whether it’s the sexual abuse of female gymnasts, or eating disorders among wrestlers, or the horrifying rate of brain injury in the contact sports- I think as a society we talk a good game about protecting young people except when it comes to their entertainment value and sports. Then we get all huffy- parents should have known that the team doctor was raping their daughter. The administration couldn’t possibly have known that the coach was abusing young men. The athletes themselves should have gone to the police, the HS kid should have refused to run laps in 90 degree heat before he collapsed, etc.
Nah. We abuse young people in the name of athletics. This particular case may be completely without merit, but if it’s making people aware that abuse- physical, financial, sexual exploitation, unnecessary medical risks-- is part of our obsession with sports-- maybe it’s a good thing.
And the athletes graduating from college- who by some measures are believed to be reading at a 7th grade level from a college which has benefited financially from their football/basketball talents-- with a BA in hand but virtually no education? Shame, shame, shame on this system of exploitation.
I don’t disagree, but without athletics (and likely the money that came with it) the types of students you are talking about would not have gone to college at all (and likely had worse outcomes than having a BA in hand, yet not being educated at the level we all would want).
It’s an interesting question but I’m not sure how significant the impact would be.
The academic demands of these schools are a disqualifier for the vast majority of college athletes. It just isn’t the college experience they want and/or admission would be an issue.
Then there’s the difference between playing big time college hoops in packed home arenas vs the more subdued league play (still a great experience in the Ivy League, but different). Again, a disqualifier for some but not for others.
For the remaining interested recruits, some will get great financial aid approaching a full scholarship and some won’t care. There’s a portion where it might be a difference maker but I don’t know how large that portion is.
One of the advantages of the Ivy model from the athlete’s perspective is that funding isn’t linked to participation. There’s some value in that. And then of course the education itself carries some value, especially for those who opt for this more academically rigorous path. The recruits currently weigh those benefits and the FA against potential full scholarships at other schools.
So I don’t know how all that pans out in the end if full scholarships entered the picture. They’re getting very good athletes at this point even in head count sports. But as mentioned, one Bella Alarie level recruit every few years can make a big difference (although in her case, the lack of a scholarship didn’t appear to matter as she went to Princeton anyway, I’m assuming without any aid).
But in the case of equivalency sports I think it’s fair to say that scholarship money isn’t a limiting factor for Ivy League schools. In fact, need-based aid is probably making school more affordable for many or most of those athletes than what they’d find at a non-Ivy with a good partial scholarship. And in any case they’re getting very good athletes in these sports.
Probably also worth noting that it’s not like the Princeton men hoops team had a cakewalk through the conference this year. They lost 4 times and had a struggle to win the tournament. Now they’re in the sweet 16 and it’s no fluke but at the same time it’s not like they were a slam dunk to even win the conference. So it’s a very solid mid-major conference even now.
Now imagine all those funds that are first laundered through sports programs paying for facilities, staffing, travel, recruiters, consultants, athletes, PhotoShop experts, so that eventually it can “pay back”,… had instead gone directly towards funding higher education as a benefit for all academically qualifying students (eliminating all these other non-educational parties who currently consume the bulk of the funds).
And those who want to further sports, are still welcome to invest in clubs and leagues, to afford all these other things.
Okay, but I don’t think CBS is going to give millions to colleges if there is no March Madness.
I’m not going to pay $100 to travel to CU on game day to watch math students solve problems or listen to a history lecture, but I will pay it for a football game (and a lot more by the time the day is done for parking, food, t-shirts).
There are schools that don’t offer the big sports experience and still have plenty to invest in the things you want (the Ivies for example) but they aren’t getting big sponsorships from TV contracts, from Sports Authority, from Budweiser. And then there are other schools where sports bring in lots of money so that the school can offer that math competition and history lectures.
Don’t want big sports? Go to Harvard or Bates or Chicago. Do want big sports go to Stanford or USC or Notre Dame.
One problem with this is that the price allegedly is not fixed for all athletes, as needs based FA is equally available to athletes. So the claim is that the Ivies fixed tuition prices only to students whose families made enough to afford full tuition, according to the respective school’s calculations.
The proof is in the pudding of course, but it is possible that the arrangement is pro-competitive. If, as many universities suggest, tuition does not cover the full cost of student attendance and if the non-availability of athletic scholarships makes more FA available, it would actually result in lowering tuition to the entire student body (or lowering tuition to FA students). A significant road block, provided it is not a per se case.
I agree with much of that, thanks for sharing. It’s unfortunate that the NCAA is completely non-functional and Congress dysfunctional. I hope each org make the changes that are needed, yet as we know…hope is not a good strategy.
the ncaa is an easy target for scorn, but today they have zero power due to anti-trust. There are only two ways around that: 1) players become unionized; 2) Congress gives the ncaa an exemption to anti-trust.
As to the suit against the IL, I can see the judge finding that all 8 schools got together to price fix by agreeing collectively to not to offer athletic discounts.
