Hoping you guys can help me. I'm having an argument with a friend regarding the possible stipends.

Here is the question.

Let's use Richmond as an example.

Let's say the stipends pass and the A-10 approves offering the full cost of attendance (which they have already discussed and agreed to). And let's say the CAA votes to not approve the stipends.

From what I understand, the proposal states that if a school decides to offer the stipends it has to be for ALL scholarship athletes, not just a few particular sports.

Richmond Football plays in the CAA though. So would this mean that Richmond would need the CAA to approve offering stipends so that it could give it's football players the full cost of attendance in order to allow all of their A-10 scholarship athletes to receive the full cost of attendance?

Basically the question is would a school like Richmond be screwed regarding offering the stipends even though the A-10 approved it because they have a football team in the CAA (or another league that doesn't approve stipends)?

This could also apply to URI, Villanova, Georgetown, Fordham, Duquesne and their respective football conferences.

First, we don't know at what level non-P5 will be able to follow autonomous legislation. It could be the school level, or it could be the conference level. That hasn't been settled just yet.

Second, we don't know what level the FCOA scholarships will be implemented. Are stipends for FGIA recipients only? or is a partial stipend available to a player on a partial scholarship? Is it for revenue sports only? We don't know. The presumption is that it would be for all scholarship athletes, but the legislation hasn't even been proposed yet.

(06-12-2014 12:58 PM)CommuterBob Wrote:  First, we don't know at what level non-P5 will be able to follow autonomous legislation. It could be the school level, or it could be the conference level. That hasn't been settled just yet.

Second, we don't know what level the FCOA scholarships will be implemented. Are stipends for FGIA recipients only? or is a partial stipend available to a player on a partial scholarship? Is it for revenue sports only? We don't know. The presumption is that it would be for all scholarship athletes, but the legislation hasn't even been proposed yet.

So basically we just won't know until it happens. They could be screwed or they might not be.

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.

Yeah it could definitely mess with schools like Nova, Richmond, and URI. Those are the only teams that have somewhat successful FCS football teams but are in basketball conferences that have already said they would approve stipends.

For schools like Duquesne, Georgetown and Fordham (and maybe even URI), they could just move their football teams to the Pioneer League and not offer football scholarships to solve the problem. Even though Fordham was the school who did all the work to get the Patriot League to finally start offering football scholarships.

A more realistic example would be the pac12 & the MPSF

(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.

Am I right though that the most recent proposal that came out said that the stipends would have to be for all scholarship athletes?

I think that Title IX is the key factor here. I don't see how any school can limit this to the revenue sports (FB and MBB) without getting sued.

(06-12-2014 06:40 PM)EmeryZach Wrote:  Am I right though that the most recent proposal that came out said that the stipends would have to be for all scholarship athletes?

Not quite. The last proposal was the one initially passed in 2011, but overridden in 2012, that specified that it would be for all full scholarship (FGIA) recipients up to $2,000 or FCoA, whichever was less. Partial scholarship recipients or those not on scholarship would not be eligible, which was one of the issues some schools had with it.