NCAA to Consider Sweeping Changes in Athlete Aid and Eligibility Rules
Major-college athletes could receive up to $2,000 a year more in institutional aid and be granted multiyear scholarships under a wide-ranging set of proposals to be presented to the NCAA’s Division I Board of Directors next week.
Other ideas under consideration include the elimination of foreign travel and nontraditional-season competition, reductions in regular-season games, fewer scholarships for big-time football and men’s and women’s basketball teams, and stiffer eligibility standards for athletes, according to an NCAA document obtained by The Chronicle.
The proposals, some of which have yet to be finalized, are the result of months of discussion by several NCAA committees charged with overhauling rules to deal with widespread problems at the elite level of college sports.
Equity issues underlie much of the work of the groups, whose proposals could lead to major changes to the NCAA rule book and the penalties that programs face for stepping outside the lines.
Billion-dollar TV deals and multimillion-dollar compensation packages for coaches have led to growing calls for paying athletes. While Mark A. Emmert, the NCAA’s president, refuses to go there, he supports the idea of giving athletes more money for travel and other incidentals, moving closer to covering their full cost of attendance. Median college costs at public universities exceed an athlete’s scholarship coverage by about $4,000, according to a recent USA Today analysis.
A proposal by the Student-Athlete Well-Being Working Group, one of several groups formed following an NCAA presidential retreat in August, would permit a Division I athlete on full scholarship to receive up to $2,000 in additional institutional financial aid, should his or her conference agree to provide the money. Athletes on partial scholarship would receive prorated amounts, with both figures changing annually based on the rate of inflation.
“This won’t eliminate things like players selling their memorabilia or finding other improper ways of getting money in their pockets, but we think it’s the right thing to do and the fair thing to do,” Graham B. Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University and the group’s chair, said in an interview Thursday. “We’re optimistic it will be adopted by the board.”
He is also confident about his group’s proposal to begin permitting multiyear aid agreements (colleges are now only allowed to offer one-year renewable awards). Some coaches don’t renew players’ scholarships because they’re not performing as well athletically as the coaches had hoped, Mr. Spanier said, a practice that can reflect poorly on universities.
“If our real goal is to help students get degrees, we have to stand behind that” with multiyear aid, he said. “Once you make a commitment to an athlete, you should stick with that athlete if he or she is doing the best they can…”