(03-04-2017 11:39 AM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  

(03-04-2017 11:10 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  I think what we are seeing is the impact of the merit scholarships that TCU and pretty everybody else are now offering to plug the gap between partial scholarships and total costs. It can make up to a $20,000 per year difference in cost of attendance. No matter how badly your son wants to go to Rice or play for Wayne or get that Rice degree, that's a hard nut to crack for many families. Baseball has tried to address it by having baseball players share off-campus housing, which saves money. The college masters have complained about this, and there have been some comments that Wayne doesn't let baseball players live on campus. It's not that he won't let them, but that the economics simply don't work for them to live on campus.
I really don't know how to solve this within the constraints of current NCAA rules and Rice's financial aid situation. I have heard that some baseball players are actually opting out of baseball scholarships in favor of need-based scholarships available to the student body as a whole, because that is a better deal that the partial baseball scholarships, but I've only heard that, I can't confirm it.
If some sort of solution is not found, I don't really see how we can maintain recruiting at a level to get us back to Omaha any time soon. We are simply at a huge disadvantage versus any other program that we recruit against.
This is my understanding of the problem. Somebody with better information, please feel free to correct this.

This stuff is largely true. I've heard we have a few guys on the team who are on pretty damn close to full need-based scholarship. Need-based and athletic can also be combined into a package.
A way around this (that Vanderbilt has used) is to use minority-based scholarships for their players. Our team is more racially diverse than some of our competitors, but I'm not sure if we have scholarships in place solely based on race.

Can need-based and partial athletic in fact be combined? I didn't think that could be done, because there are too many opportunities for gaming the system. Maybe that rule has been changed. If it has, then there might be some work-around opportunities there.

My understanding was that if you had a partial athletic scholarship, it could be combined only with a merit-based scholarship that was awarded on the same basis for athletes and non-athletes. Given the academic qualifications of our student body as a whole, there is no way to give baseball players merit-based scholarships that would meet that requirement.

(03-04-2017 12:52 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(03-04-2017 11:39 AM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  

(03-04-2017 11:10 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  I think what we are seeing is the impact of the merit scholarships that TCU and pretty everybody else are now offering to plug the gap between partial scholarships and total costs. It can make up to a $20,000 per year difference in cost of attendance. No matter how badly your son wants to go to Rice or play for Wayne or get that Rice degree, that's a hard nut to crack for many families. Baseball has tried to address it by having baseball players share off-campus housing, which saves money. The college masters have complained about this, and there have been some comments that Wayne doesn't let baseball players live on campus. It's not that he won't let them, but that the economics simply don't work for them to live on campus.
I really don't know how to solve this within the constraints of current NCAA rules and Rice's financial aid situation. I have heard that some baseball players are actually opting out of baseball scholarships in favor of need-based scholarships available to the student body as a whole, because that is a better deal that the partial baseball scholarships, but I've only heard that, I can't confirm it.
If some sort of solution is not found, I don't really see how we can maintain recruiting at a level to get us back to Omaha any time soon. We are simply at a huge disadvantage versus any other program that we recruit against.
This is my understanding of the problem. Somebody with better information, please feel free to correct this.

This stuff is largely true. I've heard we have a few guys on the team who are on pretty damn close to full need-based scholarship. Need-based and athletic can also be combined into a package.
A way around this (that Vanderbilt has used) is to use minority-based scholarships for their players. Our team is more racially diverse than some of our competitors, but I'm not sure if we have scholarships in place solely based on race.

Can need-based and partial athletic in fact be combined? I didn't think that could be done, because there are too many opportunities for gaming the system. Maybe that rule has been changed. If it has, then there might be some work-around opportunities there.

My understanding was that if you had a partial athletic scholarship, it could be combined only with a merit-based scholarship that was awarded on the same basis for athletes and non-athletes. Given the academic qualifications of our student body as a whole, there is no way to give baseball players merit-based scholarships that would meet that requirement.

That is the question posed to JK yesterday and he said that there was discussion about need based being paired with athletic scholarships (the way merit can be paired with athletic) two years ago at the NCAA meetings but that it had been tabled for 3 years.

(03-03-2017 10:53 PM)Minnewaska Owl Wrote:  

(03-03-2017 10:33 PM)Tiki Owl Wrote:  Sad that we used to be down the street playing in a tournament with top teams and winning the majority of the time. Things have changed greatly this decade.

And I'm afraid our days of being invited to Minute Maid are probably over. It's been a few years since we have been competitive there. We are no longer a program that other teams look up to - and hence fan interest to see Rice play has dropped off dramatically. Probably the biggest turnoff to tournament organizers is the fact that we now bring a negligible fan-base of our own to the games.

I was not able to make it to tonight's game. I'm curious. Was there much of a crowd there?

2018 Minute Maid field was announced. We are not in it.

UH, Louisiana, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, Kentucky, Sam Houston St.

I think it is a bit of a conscious decision on our part not to go to the Minute Maid tournament.

I'd honestly rather play at Reckling.

Agreed. Next year we start the season in Orlando at UCF's tournament, as payback for them coming to Reckling last year. I know UVA will be one of the other participants, so it will be a good test. We also hit the road to play Stanford in Palo Alto...so, had we played in Minute Maid we would only have one OOC home series.