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South Carolina to Guarantee 4 Year Scholis

Wooly

Well-Known Member
I don't think they are the only team doing this, but I don't know what other major programs do it. Apparently none in the SEC do, which is what the article was saying.

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- South Carolina will guarantee four-year scholarships to its qualifying NCAA sports, becoming the first school in the Southeastern Conference to make that pledge.
The school sent out letters to its 383 athletes Thursday, 121 of whom will receive the full four-year guarantee when renewing their scholarships. Those athletes are in what the NCAA calls "headcount" sports of football, men's and women's basketball, and women's tennis and volleyball, where each player receives a full scholarship.
"We want to give people a snapshot of what a major university can provide to its student-athletes," said Fran Person, a former senior adviser to Vice President Joe Biden hired last month as a point of contact for athlete welfare at South Carolina.
South Carolina's other teams -- which represent about two-thirds of the student-athletes who receive financial aid -- are classified as "equivalency" sports where coaches divide up a set number of scholarships among their rosters, such as baseball having to spread 11.7 scholarships between up to three dozen players.
Senior associate athletic director Charles Bloom said the school is exploring how to create a similar process for those athletes.
Other schools, including Indiana and Maryland of the Big Ten, have also announced guaranteed scholarships for their athletes.
Person said South Carolina is the first in the SEC to offer four-year guaranteed scholarships.
"We want to be out front with what's going on," South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner said.
South Carolina began looking at possibly guaranteeing multiyear scholarships after the NCAA approved rules that let the Power 5 conferences -- the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC -- unilaterally change some rules that have applied to all Division I schools for years.
South Carolina and the 64 others in those five leagues will also benefit from a new, weighted voting system on legislation covering the 350 schools in Division I.
The only ways South Carolina athletes can now lose scholarships are if they voluntarily leave, become ineligible or violate university or athletic department rules.
Person said South Carolina would continue giving athletes who leave in good standing the chance to re-enroll and complete their degrees.
The cost of athletic scholarships at South Carolina ranges from $21,461 for an in-state student living on campus to $41,121 for an out-of-state student living off campus.

The first question I have is if these are guaranteed athletic scholis that count against the 85 man limit, and CANNOT be transferred to other forms of scholis. I say that because we all know coaches want to run some players off that don't perform as well as they hoped, and they could simply move these kids to general scholis and keep their promise.

The important thing is that kids are getting guarantees for four years, which they should, since they are signing commitments themselves. It's about time we see more of this. Of course I am less impressed with the athletic department if they can simply push the scholi somewhere else, because then they are not really doing what they say

Thoughts
 

Rutgers Mike

Dr. Sad
Maryland announced something similar a few weeks ago.

And I don't see them being willing to guarantee them as athletic scholarships. Keep running those kids off corch.
 

BasinBictory

OUT with the GOUT
A guaranteed four-year scholie regardless of performance?

Be great if they afforded the same to those who got into school on an academic scholarship.
 

DeadMan

aka spiker or DeadMong
Big Ten already does this. But I'm pretty sure it's illusory. It's not a year-to-year renewal like scholarships currently are or used to be, but you can still have it revoked for a variety of reasons. I'm guessing coaches will easily find a way around this.
 

Travis7401

Douglass Tagg
Community Liaison
I think the best thing to do would be give a full 4 year scholarship worth of credits that can be deferred or transferred to a family member as well. The value of 4 years of education is diminished by the requirements of football (you don't get a good education if you are putting that much time into football, not to mention missing classes due to travel). If players could take fewer (or no) credits during season, it would give them the option to finish their full education at their own pace without diminishing the value of the institution/degree. If they don't want to go to college at all, they can transfer the credits to family instead.

I was a very good student in college and I know for a fact there is no way I'd be able to even pass my full load of engineering classes while also juggling a football player's schedule. The fact that everyone pretends to believe the "student atholete" bullshit just pushes players to cheat or institutions to make non academically rigorous courses/shady "tutor" programs.
 

Wooly

Well-Known Member
A guaranteed four-year scholie regardless of performance?

Be great if they afforded the same to those who got into school on an academic scholarship.
Yeah, but at least for academics you can come and go as you wish. In athletics you have to get the school to release you from your scholi to leave and get another one elsewhere, and you have limited time to play football. Coaches come and go as they will even after they recruit a kid (contract or not), but the kid is stuck. If the kid will make and keep his commitment to the team, the team should do the same for him. That is all I am getting at. Performance in a sport is not easily measured. All you can ask of a kid is that he works hard and gives his best. If he does that, he should keep his scholarship. We all know D1A programs and coaches are the devil though, and they won't think twice about running off kids that they don't value.

Of course academic scholis have a lot of deception in them too. They use them to get kids to a school, but many schools require you to keep a unreasonably high GPA to keep them, like 3.85. My wife originally had an academic scholi, but the requirement was actually 3.9 to keep it. She had one B+ in her college career I believe, and she lost it because of that. She still eventually got it back up to 3.9 by the time she graduated, which was suma cum laude, National Honor Society, with a double major, but apparently that kind of performance is not enough to keep a scholarship. What a crock that was. The school basically needed kids to lose their scholarships so they could use them to market to a new class of kids each year.
 

Wooly

Well-Known Member
Coaches and programs are the decision makers, and that means they can find whatever reason they want to run a kid off. We all know this is just a marketing ploy by So. Carolina. But at least it brings the issue to the forefront again.
 
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Wooly

Well-Known Member
I think the best thing to do would be give a full 4 year scholarship worth of credits that can be deferred or transferred to a family member as well. The value of 4 years of education is diminished by the requirements of football (you don't get a good education if you are putting that much time into football, not to mention missing classes due to travel). If players could take fewer (or no) credits during season, it would give them the option to finish their full education at their own pace without diminishing the value of the institution/degree. If they don't want to go to college at all, they can transfer the credits to family instead.

I was a very good student in college and I know for a fact there is no way I'd be able to even pass my full load of engineering classes while also juggling a football player's schedule. The fact that everyone pretends to believe the "student atholete" bullshit just pushes players to cheat or institutions to make non academically rigorous courses/shady "tutor" programs.

That gets to the heart of it, doesn't it. As long as the sport is about money athletic performance will matter more than academics, and they will cut corners, lie, and cheat to win. It wasn't always this bad though. Even when I was a kid it was not so competitive and so money driven. Plenty of kids could focus on school and were allowed to try and be good at both. Now there is just too much pressure to succeed to let kids put much focus on school. Nebraska used to have several players going to medical school with high GPAs in science majors. You are not going to see that now. The student athlete idea may have been a farce to a certain degree for long, long time, but it was not always completely ridiculous like it is now. There are plenty of football alumni who have benefited greatly from their college time and degrees, and now have much better lives because of it. They come to games and donate money, and relive a little of their college days. I kind of doubt we will see any where near that in the future. The schools now don't care about the kids, and the kids are just mercenaries...and it won't get any better when they start getting paid more.

The idea you mentioned is something Tennessee does already. If you play a scholarship sport you can come back and finish your degree for free after your sport is done. I understand the reason and benefit of this, but I still don't like it, because it helps perpetuate the business of CFB. I do realize that the sport is not going back to a time that is less money driven, but it doesn't mean I have to like it or approve of it.
 

Wooly

Well-Known Member
The one good thing to come from the Dooley era, the Vol For Life program. I'll give him his props for it.

I like that it tries to help these kids get a college education. I wish it didn't have to be because they were only allowed to concentrate on football before that.
 

Wooly

Well-Known Member
Damn, 3.9 to keep an academic scholly? Only had to keep a 3.5 for my full-tuition scholly

The school was literally counting on these kids losing their scholarships, so they could offer them to the next class. She went from full ride to some kind of partial scholarship I believe.

I had a 3.75 and I didn't get any scholarship.
 
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