Wow Metro M. That makes way too much sense! You ought to send a copy of that to every member of the BOT and save the last copy and shove it up Pres. Davis's ass.
That's exactly how sports other than football and basketball were funded in the 60's and 70's. I was not recruited anywhere but I wanted to play golf,so I came to Furman for the academics and because it had one of best golf courses in the country right on campus and walk-ons were welcome. They didn't have a lot of scholarship money for golf, maybe 1 1/2 split up between 4-5 players. Nobody had anywhere close to a full ride. We had a 6 round qualifying tournament to see who made the team and I bet there were 40-50 guys trying out for about 10-12 spots. And there were some damn good players too.
We won the SoCon three times, went to the NCAA's twice, and were ranked 17th in the nation one year while I was there. We had one player that qualified for the U.S. Open while he was still at Furman, one that won the South Carolina State Amateur, and one that after Furman won the Carolina's Amateur and later was a U.S. Senior Open qualifiee and won multiple Senior State Amateurs There also was a player that graduated right before I came that was runner-up at the U.S. Amateur and played in the 1974 and 1975 Masters.
Bottom line we were able to compete without a lot of scholarship money. I know things have changed but not necessarily for the better. Sports has somehow gotten too expensive. Hell, the women won the national championship with no scholarship money.
I bet there were more baseball players paying their own way than there were players on scholarship. You're right, that was more than a business decision. If it was a business decision it was a poor one.