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Post by slxpress on Oct 5, 2023 13:38:53 GMT -5
That’s not true. There was all kinds of speculation. That was one. There was also the idea Eggleston was competing on an academic scholarship. There were 14 legitimate scholarship level players on last year’s team - more if you count Deandre Pierce who now appears to be on scholarship with Georgia Tech. It turns out the two non scholarship players were Ewert and Caffey, both of whom were enrolled for one semester and received an NIL stipend. I don’t know the amount, but I know it was at least $5k because all the volleyball players received that amount the year before, and I’m sure it didn’t go down. Could have been more than that, but there’s no way to determine it. In any case, O’Neal has been on scholarship the entire time. Was Ewert actually confirmed? We all figured on Caffey because she was such a late addition, but Ewert signed much earlier IIRC She was confirmed to me by someone who would know, and they didn’t tell me to keep it a secret. I don’t have the access to know that, but they absolutely did. Remember, Ewert didn’t get to campus until after she graduated from Colorado, so while it was earlier, it’s not like she reported in the spring like Fleck and Bergmark. |
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Post by slxpress on Oct 5, 2023 13:49:10 GMT -5
One thing that’s not being raised is the idea of scholarship limitations being used to bring a minimum of comparative parity to collegiate sports.
Now we all know it’s basically impossible to have parity when talent acquisition is based on recruitment rather than a draft, but whatever parity exists is significantly affected if all players from wealthy backgrounds paid their own way and players from poorer backgrounds received scholarships.
Also, there’s hair all over it. It would make the enforcement of NIL look like child’s play.
Volleyball - and all scholarship sports, really - are much better off with the system we have now. Like others have already said, if you want a more needs based system it should really start at a much earlier age. The competitive advantage children from wealthier backgrounds have over children from poorer backgrounds in nearly all sports other than football and basketball is unreal.
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Post by westie13 on Oct 5, 2023 13:49:55 GMT -5
There is a huge disparity even to play at the club level. My daughter played for one of the top clubs in the country, on their top team. Every single player on her team came from an incredibly wealthy family. I’m talking not even one middle class family. Those kids did get full ride offers when the time came.
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Post by slxpress on Oct 5, 2023 14:02:29 GMT -5
There is a huge disparity even to play at the club level. My daughter played for one of the top clubs in the country, on their top team. Every single player on her team came from an incredibly wealthy family. I’m talking not even one middle class family. Those kids did get full ride offers when the time came. Not to mention the importance of playing club to even be a competitive player. I remember when baseball became centered around elite traveling clubs. It’s basically knocked the ability of poorer kids in this country to even compete in the sport. You see all kinds of international players, especially from Latin American countries, because the infrastructure is there to provide intense training at an early age to even the poorest families. That’s not the case in the U.S.. Then take something like swimming. It’s not just having a pool. It’s the time investment required. Especially at those meets. The practices and the time invested st meets is absurd. Swimming parents have a time commitment that’s on a different level from other sports. There’s no real infrastructure in this country where promising athletes are plucked from their families and then vast resources invested in them to help them reach their potential in one sport or another. So that’s done ad hoc through families, and the only ones who can afford it are wealthier families. Men’s basketball has a very dirty AAU scene, but I’m not going to get into that, and then there’s a school like IMG, but that level of support would have to come at an earlier age to be truly effective. Which is not to say we need to change the model. I don’t know for sure that’s the case. But that’s where it needs to change if we’re wanting to give athletes from poorer families the same kind of competitive advantages. And then of course, we’re pretty much breaking up families for the sake of sports excellence. |
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Post by mervinswerved on Oct 5, 2023 14:57:16 GMT -5
I don't see anything unethical about using NIL money to cover an athlete's educational cost beyond the 12 headcount scholarship limit. Where stuff could get really wacky is if the equivalency sports (I'm thinking baseball) using NIL to effectively put an entire 40 man roster on full scholarships.
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Post by tomclen on Oct 5, 2023 15:06:39 GMT -5
I'd suggest it would be nice if we joined a number of other leading countries in making college education free - or at least not something that could put you in debt for life - but I don't want to get evicted to OTN. So, nevermind.
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Post by tablealgebra on Oct 5, 2023 16:19:50 GMT -5
"Should" we make college more affordable based on need is quite the question. Considering that the total university endowments in the United States total over $800 billion, or about $53,000 per college student, I think the answer is we could do much better than we are doing.
But "should wealthy scholarship athletes give up their scholarships to help students with money needs?" I think the answer is a straight no. Those kids earned their scholarships.
Now, as sixpress pointed out above, a lot of them earned that scholarship with resources that many others did not have available to them. As club sports are almost a necessity for international competitiveness, I think that giving kids more access to club sports is a much more feasible solution - and from a volleyball standpoint, a much more pressing need (imagine if we could triple the potential player pool at the youth level how that would affect the strength of our national teams)
EDIT: If you want to think about this a different way, there could be a fundraising for scholarships given out by the AVCA (I know that using scholarships to lessen the cost of school is problematic, but at least it's something). Tell coaches to encourage parents who are well off to donate as it will raise the profile of volleyball as a whole. Because rich people don't necessarily *not like helping out*, but they very much want to have control of where their money goes when they do help out. Or, with 'permission' from the NCAA, you could have some of that money go to helping talented youngsters interested in club, based on need.
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Post by JT on Oct 5, 2023 16:35:42 GMT -5
Not entirely fair. There are plenty of need-based scholarships that aren’t athletic. A student-athlete (at least at the big schools) gets a lot of extra help in academics. Now, they are also starting to get NIL cash - and them being a college athlete certainly helps boost their NIL exposure (compare to Suzy Student’s college-experience Insta-Tok reach in followers). Maybe athletic scholarships should start being need-based. It would take exactly one legal challenge for that model to be tossed out; and rightfully so. On what grounds would it be tossed? Coaches can currently make offers to just about anyone they please (who qualifies at their school and meets NCAA eligibility). The non-offered PSA can’t claim that she’s been passed over even though she’s better. Schools already can and do take a pass on kids that they think are “too good,” because they can’t compete with other schools. They can and do make decisions based on assessed “chemistry” with the other players. They can and do make decisions based on what positions they need to fill. “I would have been offered a scholarship but I’m too rich” doesn’t seem like an obvious winning legal challenge to me. |
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Post by JT on Oct 5, 2023 16:40:10 GMT -5
"Should" we make college more affordable based on need is quite the question. Considering that the total university endowments in the United States total over $800 billion, or about $53,000 per college student, I think the answer is we could do much better than we are doing. That $800b would get chewed up quickly if the principal, rather than the annual return, was used too much. (Some principal can be considered “used,” because it’s replenished by annual donations.) Taking a damned-good 10% investment return after inflation turns it into about $5,300 per student. That would certainly *help* lower tuition if it got used that way, but it’s not quite as rosy as the $53k per student that the entire endowment principal makes it appear. |
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Post by tablealgebra on Oct 5, 2023 16:54:48 GMT -5
"Should" we make college more affordable based on need is quite the question. Considering that the total university endowments in the United States total over $800 billion, or about $53,000 per college student, I think the answer is we could do much better than we are doing. That $800b would get chewed up quickly if the principal, rather than the annual return, was used too much. (Some principal can be considered “used,” because it’s replenished by annual donations.) Taking a damned-good 10% investment return after inflation turns it into about $5,300 per student. That would certainly *help* lower tuition if it got used that way, but it’s not quite as rosy as the $53k per student that the entire endowment principal makes it appear. You can't force universities to dip into their endowments at all. A lot of that money is earmarked for god-knows-what, I'm sure someone who works with a university foundation could tell us a lot more. And honestly, a lot of it is probably already going towards tuition relief. But $800B is a ton of money, and it's grown by like $100B since 2020. And my statement was only about potential. If America wanted it, college would be cheap (it could be free too, but I'm not a big believer in that). The money is out there. But we don't - or, not enough of us do and are willing and able to invest the money to make that happen. |
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Post by mma40027002 on Oct 6, 2023 8:05:07 GMT -5
There is a huge disparity even to play at the club level. My daughter played for one of the top clubs in the country, on their top team. Every single player on her team came from an incredibly wealthy family. I’m talking not even one middle class family. Those kids did get full ride offers when the time came. This is fairly accurate at a lot of clubs and even more, there are clubs that will take girls on a team (probably not a top team but they'll find a place for them) because the families can pay for it (and all of the extra stuff like lessons, gear, etc.), not because of their ability. Money talks, unfortunately. I was at a high school game the other night and could see clearly that there were very good athletes on the team that was losing badly. The winning team had all club kids with years of training. The losing team had a bunch of super athletes, but none had training beyond their high school team. Volleyball is definitely a rich kids-sport. Sadly, anymore, all sports are. |
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Post by fromonhigh on Oct 6, 2023 8:57:28 GMT -5
I pose this as a genuine question, and struggle to word it without being seen as "offensive" As we have seen, alot of volleyball players come from wealthy backgrounds But alot coming from EXTREMELY wealthy backgrounds, like college tuition would not even come close to breaking the bank for them. Regardless of their players talent, should they be on a full ride? Should that money go to someone else, maybe not as talented, but enough to make an impact, who college would be harder to afford? I know the logistics of this would be next to impossible to put through, but was just a thought. No. |
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Post by mikegarrison on Oct 6, 2023 8:59:59 GMT -5
This is pretty much how athletics works in general. Wealthy kids get scholarships because their parents can afford to pay for club ball so they get better at the game and so forth. I wonder how many Power 5 kiddos didn't start playing club until say they were a sophomore in HS or later. The idea that Division 1 athletics is a tool for lower income kids to climb the ladder is mostly a made up one, in my opinion. Basketball, running, soccer ... these types of sports don't actually need much in the way of expensive coaching. A lot of kids pick up the skills just by playing, and they don't need a ton of money to play because you can run anywhere, for example. |
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Post by baytree on Oct 6, 2023 9:40:24 GMT -5
This is pretty much how athletics works in general. Wealthy kids get scholarships because their parents can afford to pay for club ball so they get better at the game and so forth. I wonder how many Power 5 kiddos didn't start playing club until say they were a sophomore in HS or later. The idea that Division 1 athletics is a tool for lower income kids to climb the ladder is mostly a made up one, in my opinion. This has been true for quite a while but it seems like it's becoming even more true. The most recent article I could find was from 2017 but it said that in 2010, 28% of men's D1 BB players, 26% of FB players, and 24% of WBB players were first gen students. Overall, 16% of D1 players were first gens. By 2015, 19% of MBB, 23% of FB players, 17% of WBB players, and 14% of athletes overall were first gens. That's a big decline. I tried finding more recent statistics but couldn't. Does anyone have more recent data?
Given that around half of college students are first gens, the discrepancy is startling. If you think that education should support socioeconomic mobility, athletic scholarships seem counterproductive. Making them need based could help.
ETA: This is a problem that some universities are struggling with, esp after the Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard case this summer.
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Post by stanfordvb on Oct 6, 2023 9:43:25 GMT -5
I didn't read any of this except the first post but ive thought of this for sooo long. I thin they absolutely should be on a full ride if they're deserving of one, but I think it'd be cool to see some of them opt out in favor of the team maybe
for example, if I happened to be Jermaine oneal lol... I would've told Elliot "go get another beast to help my daughter win a natty and dont waste the scholarship on us". of course I would only do this after I filed a restraining order on all volleyball announcers for their obsession with me
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