Affirm wrote: ↑Sat May 25, 2024 4:30 pm
(I realize that FUBeAR knows, and that I do not know, how the financing of football scholarships works at schools like Furman.)
Nope … FUBeAR would need to review ALL of FU’s financial records to understand fully how athletics scholarships are treated.
FUBeAR does know they are NOT accounted for by Athletics writing a check to the University in a manner similar to how athletics might pay for athletic tape and book it as an expense. The ‘cost’ of athletics scholarships, most likely, involves a much more complex and nuanced financial treatment within FU’s financial records.
BUT…related to that … here’s another matter associated with this NCAA ‘plan’ to handle these lawsuits and restructure - “Roster Size Limits are “in” / Scholarship limits are “out”. Again, we would need to see the fine print of a final plan, but FUBeAR is reading that Football roster sizes will be capped at 85 and scholarship limits will be eliminated. That works great for the big schools as they all ‘fully funded’ their 85 allowed scholarships AND in recent years expanded their rosters by using NIL Collective Funding to fully ‘scholarship’ as many “walk-on’s” as they desired - typically 10-20. Now, they won’t have to ‘waste’ that NIL money on the ‘worst’ 10-20 Players and can use it to distribute more to the 85 Roster Players whose ‘scholarship expenses’ they will also cover…knowing their competitors are playing on a level field … roster-size-wise.
So…your 1st thought may be, “Wow, that means 1,340-2,680 ‘FBS Quality’ Players are gonna be ‘off-rostered’ by FBS Teams and available to play FCS Football. FCS Foootball is going to be so much better!” And, you would be correct about the numbers, but FUBeAR would disagree with you about a significant quality uptick. The bottom 10-20 Players on an FBS roster, would probably fall into the 35-55 ranking level of Players on an FCS roster - so, some more barely visible quality depth. Great to have, but not really very ‘sexy’ in the big picture.
OTOH …Furman had around 120 Players on last year’s roster. So, way oversimplifying the ‘math’, FU was receiving full tuition from 57 ‘students’ (whole or partial ‘students’) who happened to also be on the Football roster. In the new world, FU will only be able to receive full tuition from 22 whole or partial ‘students’ that also happen to be on the Football roster. So…further over-simplifying the math, that’s 35 x 80k = $2.8 million in tuition revenue that FU’s VP of Enrollment management has to find from elsewhere …cuz in most cases, those young men aren’t coming to Furman if they don’t get to wear their purple jerseys in Paladin Stadium on Saturday’s in the Fall. They can take their tuition $’s to Alabama or Clemson or to MIT and also NOT play D1 Football instead.
So…that certainly hurts the Football Team’s overall contribution to the University. And, also…Furman’s FCS competitors may also be in a better financial position to ‘fund’ an 85 man (non-tuition-generating) roster than Furman is…further compounding the economic issues with this whole thing. Maybe not, but maybe so.
Stay tuned…
