(06-12-2014 01:10 PM)Wedge Wrote: I suppose a school that doesn't want to go along with conference rules that are more restrictive than P5 rules could leave the conference.
Or, a group of schools unhappy with such restrictions could start a new conference of like-minded schools, and that's something we might see among G5 and non-FB D-I conferences if there are "autonomy rules" that not everyone wants to follow.
One of the reasons Northern Illinois left the MAC for a time was because the MAC's scholarship limit was lower than the I-A limit.
Obviously we can't know how stipends will be implemented until legislation is actually adopted but the legislation that was adopted and later over-ridden applied only to head count sports and it was up to the conferences to implement.
At the time the insider talk was that you would see a wide variety of implementations such as:
-Conferences only permitting it for men's and women's basketball.
-Some conferences implementing it on a need basis creating a financial aid formula that would determine how much of the stipend an athlete could receive.
- Schools choosing to use other sources against the stipend amount. For example if a student qualified for a $500 Pell Grant, they would get only $1500 of the $2000 stipend. Or if a student qualified for and academic scholarship of $1000 then $1000 of the $2000 would come from the academic scholarship fund.
- Schools partially implementing, for example all 85 scholarship football players receiving $2000 would cost $170,000. A school might give the coach $85,000 to distribute as he saw fit, which really isn't a horrible idea from a budget standpoint because the best players would get the stipend and the ones not receiving the stipend would have few FBS transfer options and FCS and below are equivalency so there is no assurance of a transfer resulting in receiving a full ride.