Owl 69/70/75
Just an old rugby coach
Posts: 80,833
Joined: Sep 2005
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I Root For: RiceBathChelsea
Location: Montgomery, TX
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RE: What's the deal with baseball scholarships?
(03-08-2017 11:58 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: I don't know that scholarships are the only problem, and do not mean to state or imply that they are. But the scholarship differential is a major problem, and ignoring or discounting it, or pretending that it does not exist, is simply wrong.
Here are the economics. Total cost of attendance at Rice, Baylor, TCU, and SMU (which, of course, does not have baseball) are all around $60,000/year, roughly $45,000 tuition, books, and fees, and $15,000 room and board and incidentals. Let's say you get a 1/2 scholarship to Rice (we can do 23 of these for baseball, total). That's $30,000, leaving $30,000 to pay. If you get an off-campus house with about 6-8 teammates, you can knock maybe $10,000 off the room and board and incidentals. That leaves $20,000 out of pocket.
Now look at TCU. Same baseball scholarship, same $30,000 after the baseball scholarship. Now kick in a $20,000 merit scholarship. Now you're at $10,000 net, and if you do the off-campus thing to save money, you are somewhere between $5,000 and zero, net out of pocket.
Her's the only way I can see that might narrow the gap. Jack up tuition, fees, and books to $65,000, or $80,000 total cost, but offer everybody who gets in a $20,000 merit scholarship to maintain the same $60,000 net. Now that half scholarship is $40,000, leaving $40,000 net. The merit scholarship covers $20,000 of that, and living off campus gets you down to around $10-15,000 net. That might narrow the gap enough in some cases. That would have to be very carefully defined to avoid the wrath of the NCAA, but it's probably not worse the what LSU or Nebraska get away with now. Maybe you structure the $20,000 as a loan, but with very nominal repayment provisions--say $100/year after graduation. I'm kind of fishing here, but maybe something like that could be done.
As far as Wayne, he is quite simply the only reason that D-1 athletics exist in any form at Rice today, and for that reason he has earned a few rights and privileges that others might not deserve. But regardless of whether he has gotten better or worse with age, I am quite certain that he is at a point where his age is being used by others as a recruiting negative. Situations where someone is brought in as an heir apparent seem to have a way of turning out less that totally desired, see Will Muschamp at UT or some of the rancor when Jimbo Fisher replaced Bobby Bowden at FSU, but I'm not sure that isn't the best answer here.
Or perhaps we could do the Stanford thing suggested above.
(This post was last modified: 03-08-2017 12:14 PM by Owl 69/70/75.)
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