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SMU Pom Mom wrote:

Stallion wrote:basically if you think you can earn a living as a professional then good luck Hoss-but you don't get to define and pervert the mission of some of the great universities in the country when you're not good enough yet to make it in the League. That's not our problem. We offer a great education, housing, free food, books, cost-of-living allowance, outstanding facilities etc worth in excess of $100,000 per year and we do it for 16+ sports per year and about 300 student/athletes regardless of whether you're the first or last off the bench or you are a male or female. There are a lot of kids (and parents) begging for that opportunity

Are you under the impression that athletes in equivalency sports are getting scholarships valued at $100,000 per year? I guarantee you that most SMU student athletes are getting far, far less. For example, the NCAA allows 20 scholarships in rowing. SMU has 49 women on the roster. If they give even two fulls a year to top recruits, that leaves an average of under 30% partial scholarships to everyone else, or about $21,000. And that's if SMU funds the limit, which I can't tell you for sure they do.

Not sure what the point is here. Are you saying the women's rowing team deserves more scholarship support than it currently receives? That would be a hard case to make when there is very little interest in that sport from anyone. Maybe it adds some level of diversity of experience to some students, but its costs do not match its benefit. We fund it at whatever minimum level we are required to in order to stay out of legal trouble.

I almost bit on that one too. But I think she's saying that many athletes get no where near $100K value per year as an SMU student athlete.

The cost of attendance for the typical SMU student (tuition, room, board, food plan) is a little over $70,000. I'm throwing in the value of other investments made in the student/athlete from the athletic department for a guesstimate

Stallion wrote:The cost of attendance for the typical SMU student (tuition, room, board, food plan) is a little over $70,000. I'm throwing in the value of other investments made in the student/athlete from the athletic department for a guesstimate

All degrees aren’t created equal. The majority of degrees that the athlete’s schedules allow them to get aren't worth 70K--that 70K is creative accounting.

Stallion wrote:basically if you think you can earn a living as a professional then good luck Hoss-but you don't get to define and pervert the mission of some of the great universities in the country when you're not good enough yet to make it in the League. That's not our problem. We offer a great education, housing, free food, books, cost-of-living allowance, outstanding facilities etc worth in excess of $100,000 per year and we do it for 16+ sports per year and about 300 student/athletes regardless of whether you're the first or last off the bench or you are a male or female. There are a lot of kids (and parents) begging for that opportunity

And if we want to throw more numbers around, SMU spends ~155k per athlete per year all in.

gostangs wrote:

SMU Pom Mom wrote:

Stallion wrote:basically if you think you can earn a living as a professional then good luck Hoss-but you don't get to define and pervert the mission of some of the great universities in the country when you're not good enough yet to make it in the League. That's not our problem. We offer a great education, housing, free food, books, cost-of-living allowance, outstanding facilities etc worth in excess of $100,000 per year and we do it for 16+ sports per year and about 300 student/athletes regardless of whether you're the first or last off the bench or you are a male or female. There are a lot of kids (and parents) begging for that opportunity

Are you under the impression that athletes in equivalency sports are getting scholarships valued at $100,000 per year? I guarantee you that most SMU student athletes are getting far, far less. For example, the NCAA allows 20 scholarships in rowing. SMU has 49 women on the roster. If they give even two fulls a year to top recruits, that leaves an average of under 30% partial scholarships to everyone else, or about $21,000. And that's if SMU funds the limit, which I can't tell you for sure they do.

Not sure what the point is here. Are you saying the women's rowing team deserves more scholarship support than it currently receives? That would be a hard case to make when there is very little interest in that sport from anyone. Maybe it adds some level of diversity of experience to some students, but its costs do not match its benefit. We fund it at whatever minimum level we are required to in order to stay out of legal trouble.

I don't know how it is with Rowing, but it might not be an SMU thing, it might be an NCAA thing. The NCAA limits Division I men’s programs to just 12.6 scholarships at any time; women’s programs, 12. And that’s for universities that have the resources to fully fund their varsity lacrosse teams, of which there were 70 on the men’s side and 112 on the women’s side. Now consider the average roster size for men's lacrosse (i don't know much about WLAX yet), you have teams of 40-45 players. so you can either issue 12 full rides and one partial and hope the other 28 players are willing to pay their way, or spread partials across the whole team at varying rates (more for better players). this was put in place to keep bigger budget schools (Maryland, OSU, Duke) from dominating smaller liberal arts schools w/o major conference affiliation (Denver is a perfect example since they've won Natty recently).

the reason football scholarships are capped is the same. but revenue sports get a higher % of full rides for obvious reasons.

"Minor sport" coaches are provided a budget of money equal to the value of the total NCAA allowed scholarships for that sport. Value of a scholarship is a very complex formula that varies individually for each school. It is then at the discretion of the coach as to how much $$$$ of his budget he/she is willing to give each athlete. The coach tries to blend athletic $$$ with any other grants and scholarships the student might receive, ability of the athlete's family to contribute and willingness of the athlete to take on student loans/debt. Bottom line is that very few "minor sport" athletes receive anything near a full athletic scholarship. Each year the athlete receives a blend athletic contribution that can change each year. Obviously, the prized athletes are those that are both top athletes and great students who can qualify for academic assistance making the total amount somewhat equal to a full coverage of expenses. This is where the private institutions are at a huge disadvantage as the total cost for a scholarship far exceed those of the public institutions. Hence, the public schools are in a far better position to have "minor sports" teams with considerably more depth/numbers as athletes are in a far better position and more willing to take on debt and loans as the costs are considerably less.

PoconoPony wrote:This is where the private institutions are at a huge disadvantage as the total cost for a scholarship far exceed those of the public institutions. Hence, the public schools are in a far better position to have "minor sports" teams with considerably more depth/numbers as athletes are in a far better position and more willing to take on debt and loans as the costs are considerably less.

Yes this is a major disadvantage to the privates especially when injuries start depleting a roster.

Yes, my point was simply to counter the notion that "We offer a great education, housing, free food, books, cost-of-living allowance, outstanding facilities etc worth in excess of $100,000 per year and we do it for 16+ sports per year and about 300 student/athletes regardless of whether you're the first or last off the bench or you are a male or female." Just not true. SMU does that for headcount sports because the NCAA mandates it, plus a handful of superstar athletes in equivalency sports. Everyone else is still paying a good 50 grand a year for their SMU education.

Example: My daughter (not the dancer!) was a highly recruited athlete ranked in the top 100 in the country in her sport. She received multiple offers but most were under $10,000. Georgetown offered her only $3,000! She wound up signing at a school that gave her a 40% scholarship. She also got an academic scholarship and a National Merit Scholarship, which all added up to just over 80%. Kids who are last off the bench and don't have top grades get practically nothing, just enough to sign their NLI.

SMU Pom Mom wrote:Yes, my point was simply to counter the notion that "We offer a great education, housing, free food, books, cost-of-living allowance, outstanding facilities etc worth in excess of $100,000 per year and we do it for 16+ sports per year and about 300 student/athletes regardless of whether you're the first or last off the bench or you are a male or female." Just not true. SMU does that for headcount sports because the NCAA mandates it, plus a handful of superstar athletes in equivalency sports. Everyone else is still paying a good 50 grand a year for their SMU education.

Example: My daughter (not the dancer!) was a highly recruited athlete ranked in the top 100 in the country in her sport. She received multiple offers but most were under $10,000. Georgetown offered her only $3,000! She wound up signing at a school that gave her a 40% scholarship. She also got an academic scholarship and a National Merit Scholarship, which all added up to just over 80%. Kids who are last off the bench and don't have top grades get practically nothing, just enough to sign their NLI.

Well if they don't have top grades and they are not contributing to the team, not sure why they deserve anything at all. That makes them like any other student, and in that case they were lucky to be admitted at all.

LOL.

None of you know what's going to happen. There are so many political, legal, and financial ramifications of cutting down to 64 that can't be adequately addressed in one post.

Maybe I'm not seeing the big picture but I think the current format is here to stay. 5 so-called "power" conferences and the G5. What I do see happening is either a merger or re-forming of the MWC and the AAC. The playoff system will expand to 8 teams as follows for the playoff:

1) P5 conference winners - auto bid
2) 2"at large"
3) Highest ranked G5 as long as ranked in the Top 15

This is when there will be a shuffle among the G5 conferences to try and position themselves with the strongest conference so that if the winner goes undefeated there is a better shot at getting into that Top 8.

West - SDSU, Boise State, Fresno State, BYU
Central - SMU, Houston, Tulsa, Tulane
South - Memphis, UCF, USF, ECU
North - UCONN, Temple, Navy, Cincinnati

So maybe it's just time to realign the divisions.
P5 becomes Division 1A
G5 becomes Division 1B
FCS becomes DIvision 1C