http://www.richmond.com/sports/college/baseball/article_4cbf794f-d20c-53...
The Hokies baseball team is using the cost-of-attendance money to put more athletes on scholarship instead of paying out the stipend proportionally to its current players, coach Pat Mason said after practice Wednesday.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. Part of me is glad more guys are getting at least a partial scholarship BUT the guys who were on scholarship are missing out on some money. I think I lean more towards the it's a good thing.
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The big question is were the players consulted on the decision.
No they were not.
As a booster, I feel a bit misled. I upped my donation from orange and maroon in 2014, to bronze in 2015 because I was under the impression that money would support a full cost of attendance. Perhaps I didn't understand 110% Hokie campaign, or it wasn't properly communicated.
Same here Joe, I didn't jump levels but I did raise my donation 10%, everything that was put out about this was for Pylons and COA.
Would something like this be enough to not donate next year (or not donate at much as you did in 2015)?
No. I hope to bump my donation next year.
They really weren't being deceptive.
A full ride scholarship at a P5 school had its value increased to include the COA value for that school.
The Baseball team is just then reducing the % of a full ride that many of their guys are on. The end value will be the same as last year, but it will be a smaller cut of what a full ride is due to its new large value. Then what they save under the 11.7 limit is what is now being given out to put a few more kids on at least the minimum of a 1/4 ride.
The kids on a full ride are going to get the new added COA value(football players), and all the Olympic sports kids will get a bit more money in proportion to their scholarship%, unless they decide to do this sort of thing and spread it around some more. Thats how the P5 approved it, only a full ride gets the full payment, not everyone.
I agree that when you make a donation to any organization, the organization should make it clear how that money will be put to use. A quality organization will stay true to their word.
Obviously, COA is a bit of a grey area, and probably always will be. I've been torn on it since day 1, and still am not sure where I stand.
Personally, I'm happy donating as long our athletic department is making every effort to improve and provide the best possible experiences for the student athletes.
I like the call, but I'd hope it's a step towards scholly's AND stipends for all the guys out there busting their asses. And I disagree with opening it to the team for discussion. All that does is present the opportunity to create a rift between guys currently on scholarship and those that could get some of the additional funds. Mason is the manager, he managed, and did what he felt was in the best interest of the program. That's what he's paid to do.
The baseball team needs more donations to get that done.
I'm not really familiar enough with the Hokie Club (don't make enough money yet) to know how that works. Can you earmark your donation to a specific team, or does it go in one pot and the athletic department determines how it's split? Either way, I totally agree, the money has to be there to provide financial aid, so the donor base has to get broader.
I'm pretty sure that you can specify that your donation is for a specific sport, but the Hokie Club website doesn't easily show how to do that.
I'll look into it next May when I make JG and can consider donating.
I know that you can donate to the baseball team directly through their fundraiser every year in February.
SO, having been a scholarship baseball player back in the day, I have an opinion here. And it's just that - an opinion. Assuming that doing this isn't breaking some kind of rule, and assuming that we're not creating another Bud Foster situation when he said they were looking at ways to "fine" players for transgressions, I think this is a good use of the money. According to NCAA rules, DIV 1 baseball programs have a maximum of 11.7 scholarships that they can hand out. Most rosters are going to have 25 players. So doing the math, not many are getting full scholarships anyway. Most get partials, and many get nothing. So getting more money to more kids is a good thing IMO. However, I'm not sure how this will be legal. Maybe the rules changed with the COA decision, but I'm not sure how they get around the maximum scholarship number, unless the program isn't getting the full 11.7 allowed scholarships from the athletic department. That would be a change from when I played back in the late 80s/early 90s, and would really suck and explain our struggles. At any rate, if you're interested, here's a link to some slightly dated info on the matter: http://www.scholarshipstats.com/ncaalimits.html.
Hmmm, I would think that the "11.7" rate would really just set a monetary limit per school, based on what tuition, fees, and COA would add up to. So it's not that we're breaking the 11.7 limit, but rather that because of adding COA in there, there's more money, and therefore more partial scholarships can be given out. If that makes sense?
Yes, I'm sure you're right. The pot of money associated with those 11.7 scholarships just increased because of the added COA funds. That means you have more partials you can give out.
And to a larger issue, we are in a conference with some serious baseball programs. Anything we can do to broaden our appeal to players is a positive step. We have a lot on our plates competing as is, and need all the talent we can muster. I like the idea of giving to more kids, especially in an underfunded program.
According to the article, it's an NCAA approved use of the money. I'd assume the limit must have changed, but if not, the way around it would be simply calling it a cost of attendance stipend, since tuition is a cost for non-scholarship guys. Required at least three approvers, one of which was the financial aid office, so it seems it's all allowed. Plus other universities are taking similar action (believe Louisville and UVa are mentioned), so that adds some credibility, unlike the Bud situation.
Yeah, maybe I should have read the article. So with that, then I personally agree with how they've chosen to use the money. Spread the wealth around to more folks.
EDIT: Nevermind.
Im down with it.
Since the COA payment is sort of being ignored by the NCAA. When they let the P5 decide to include them they started for all intents a Wild West type situation out there. So you have the P5 including that value as part of the definition of a full ride and the G5 can too if they want.
So now where a full ride might be worth 8 bucks now its worth 10. So you can take the kid who was on a 3/4 ride and reduce him some but dont change the end value, so now you do that for a few guys thats another 1/4 or 1/2 scholarship a guy can get on.
So long as the schools and NCAA retain the self devouring model where a scholarship actually has to pay the schools for the kids tuition then im for spreading as much of it around as possible.
Seriously, if schools were able to just write off the tuition payments of their student athletes the entire situation changes, that money then can either be reinvested towards the programs, a bit more complete financial aid to the student, or simply help more AD's from operating so far in the red.
This.
I can't complain about COA funds being used to help non-revenue sports have more scholarship money. I would much rather that than see scholarship money for non-revenue sports reduced in order to afford COA for revenue sports and student athletes that already have scholarships.
At the end of the day, student athletes have the opportunity of a life time. I hope that the majority of them just ignore all of this mess, accept whatever their school is choosing to do, and just get a good education, play some sports, soak up the traveling experiences, take advantage of the experience, and have the times of their lives. All the rest of this is just a part of life, it is what it is, and at the end of the day its not what makes or breaks it.
Devils advocate here but Im not a fan of this move. These players just had a lot of money taken away from them without any warning or vote. I highly doubt Coach Mason would be understanding if the school took away some of his salary (over $185k) without any warning. Id imagine he would be looking for employment elsewhere
"a lot of money" "took away without warning"
They werent given it yet in the first place, no player is getting less money than they were because of it.
So a full ride COA stipend is about 3500 dollars for VT. And virtually no Bball player is on a full ride. So none of them were going to get that in the first place.
A 50% guy is only missing out on an additional 1,750. Nice, but that wasnt ever going to be the difference between him staying in school and not.
A 25% guy less than a thousand a year, again that wasnt going to be the difference.
Your analogy regarding coaches' SALARY is way off base. He is an employee. With a preagreed-upon set of terms found in a hard copy legal contract. The school could not modify his pay without either his consent or a judge's ruling, as that would be breach of contract. It's money he has earned for work performed. The student athletes (which are not employees being paid) had nothing taken from them, because it was never guaranteed to them as individuals. They have no right to the funds. Each program is left to decide on the COA disbursement, be it in this manner, or be it a bump to current scholarship values. Either way, individual players are legally entitled to precisely dick, whereas a coach is legally entitled to the pay stipulated in his contract.
P.S. You're not playing "devil's advocate" if you're stating your personal opinion.
You're right, I didn't say what I meant. I agree with the move since it gives more kids scholarship money but don't like that it wasn't discussed with the players. I know I would have been upset if the media was the one who told me about a big coaches decision
In response to DBH, a couple hundred dollars is a lot of cash for anyone, especially a college student. I'd be disappointed, even if it wasn't guaranteed or promised
This is precisely why I think it's best that it wasn't discussed with players beforehand. It just presents the opportunity for a rift to develop between the players. Better for coach to be the focus of any criticism for the move. And he's said he'll reassess after this year, which I imagine would include private conversations about it with all the players. So they'll have an opportunity to speak their mind on it, but hopefully in a way that it doesn't cause tension between teammates.
Better yet, the coaches, and the rest of the administration with whom this decision was most likely made, will look out for the long-term benefit for the program. The players may say "well we want more money" in which case they benefit now, but the program can't grant more smaller scholarships that may pull in star athletes to move the program further.
In many ways, this actually helps our program. Now we have more money to offer to young recruits to get them to come play ball for us. As it was said before, many of them are not on full scholarships so they aren't seeing that full value of money. It would be different if this was football or basketball in that respect. But when it comes to the Olympic sports where there are stricter limits on scholarships, this allows them to gain ground in recruiting and further the program. Once those Olympic sports start coming up, they will draw more attention. Look at the success our Wrestling team has been having. This can only be a positive thing for the programs and I hope more of our Olympic sports programs are looking at doing this.
Ok, not sure how this works, so kind of a big question, at least to me.
If we are creating new scholarships, how does this affect Title IX and how does it mesh with the allowable scholarships under NCAA rules?
Does this mean that, say, the NCAA would allow us to offer X scholarships, and we weren't offering the full allotment? And will the "new" ones get us to X, or just closer?
I think the thing is that we aren't creating more scholarships. We are still limited to only having 11.7 scholarships for baseball, for instance. So if the COA added $3500 to the value of each of those scholarships, we now have $40,950 more. So the players will receive the same scholarship that they already have and then there's ~$41,000 per year to distribute to other players so that we can have more on partial scholarships, which is what most Olympic sport athletes are on. We aren't taking away money from anyone or adding any scholarships as much as taking the additional money from the COA and spreading it out to those who don't have scholarships or upping those who have smaller scholarships who deserve more.
Gotcha. The response I was looking (and hoping) for.
I trust Whit, in that he wouldn't be doing anything shady, so I don't see this as a huge negative. Would have been nice to have the buy-in from the team, but "management" sometimes needs to make decisions and stand by them.
Ehh.... perception is everything, and we've already been badly raked over the coals with one decision this school has made in regards towards how we handle the COA payments, and we really don't need another firestorm. General Public Steve isn't going to care that the money is going towards funding more scholarships, he's going to see that we're taking money away from players who should be getting it to fund other things for the school. If this gets into the mainstream, we're going to look really bad, again, and we just don't need that. In fact, as an Athletic Dept we're going to come away with a reputation of a school that is looking for any way possible to take money out of player's hands after they fought to get it. This needs to be nipped in the bud, and fast.
"VT Baseball team puts more kids on scholarship than ever before!"
Don't know I think that's a pretty simple and positive headline right there.
"VT Baseball Coach decides not to disperse COA money to current athletes. Will use funds for other expenditures."
simple media politics...can be twisted either way. Just depends what angle people want to take. Given our recent run-in with student-athlete funding it would probably be more attractive to take the more derisive angle from the standpoint of the media. I agree with Alum that this could blow up in our face regardless of my actual thoughts/feelings on the matter.
But when that money is used to bring in more talented athletes, it should provide a pathway to enhance the program and make us more of a yearly competitor. In the end, that's far more of a win than a one day news headline that misrepresents the way the money is being used.
Especially when you consider that after a few days, such a headline has not materialized, so the point is moot.
I'm only pointing out that it can be spun either way
Yes, but it's foolish to worry about how it can be negatively spun because something like this is a net positive. To think that this can only be a bad thing is missing the reason for why the administration is doing this. It's not to punish current scholarship athletes or to limit what they are entitled to. It's simply to enhance the program's ability to get talented athletes. What if our coaches said "alright, you can have your $850 COA that you get with your partial scholarship, oh but you also get $850 less on your financial package so that you can have that in cash?" Now they get the money, but they have to pay more money for school. It's a difference of $0 to the student-athlete, but the difference is that it appears instead of decreasing their scholarship, we are leaving it the same and moving the money around to be able to award more student-athletes the ability to have a reduced burden to go to school and play ball at VT.
Alternatively, you could argue that instituting a fining program for student athletes incentivizes them to conduct themselves within the rules agreed upon by them, their coaches, and the university. By doing so, you prepare them for life after college when they are no longer under the blanket of their coach/university and they have to be accountable for their actions. By reinforcing reality during college you're strengthening these kids instead of handicapping them for their futures
You are right about it being all spin.
But it also supposes mot people give a flying fuck about collegiate Olympic sports. They don't, if this were basketball maybe it gets traction, or football obviously. But this is for the less popular college version of a game which has been bleeding fans for decades, the coverage and public interest just isn't there.
This post made me remember that baseball is no longer in the Olympics. Damn Brits ruin everything.
But, but...cricket?
In Whit we trust.
If he agrees, I agree.
Seems a sensible enough use of the money to me. It gives the baseball coaches more discretion on deciding scholarship awards.
basically some players will be on fractional scholarships and some will get fractional COA stipend, or a combination of the two. They are just disengaging the scholarship to the the COA stipend.