Leading off today: I made mention earlier in the week of a
New York Times piece on college scholarship money that appeared on Monday. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but the story was just the start of three days of reporting on scholarship issues for college students, and a couple of the latter pieces contained essential info for the parents of college-bound athletes.
If you recall, the first story dealt with the canyon between perception and reality: There is a lot less scholarship money available than parents and athletes believe.
One of the follow-up stories had interviews with coaches about the process of persuading high school stars to play for their teams.
"There have been days when you feel like a used-car salesman," said Joe Godri, the baseball coach at Villanova University. "I’ve always been completely honest, but you can’t get away from the fact that the process can be crazy. You pump up a kid so much to come to your place, and when he agrees, you say, 'O.K., and what I’ve got for you is 25 percent of your cost to attend here.' And no one believes you, but that’s a good Division I baseball scholarship. You have to convince his parents that you’re being really fair."
Delaware men’s track coach Jim Fischer was brutally honest: "I’m somewhat amazed that the question of scholarship money always comes up, even when it’s an athlete I haven’t shown much interest in and who clearly isn’t a college-level player. When I meet with them, I sit there thinking, this parent will never even ask about money because their kid would have trouble making some high school teams. But you know what? They ask for money, too."
But it's what got said later in that story that caught my attention, for the wrong reason. Kim Ciarrocca, women’s lacrosse coach at Delaware, said parents sometimes try to play schools off against each other by claiming a rival coach has made a better scholarship offer.
"What they don’t know is that we coaches all talk to each other, and we know the truth," Ciarrocca said. "We will call the other coach and ask, 'Hey, did you offer that kid a full ride?’ When the answer is no, that kid might have lost the interest of two coaches."
Whoa! Anyone else uncomfortable with the idea of coaches from competing schools trading financial information like that? What's to stop a coach from reducing a scholarship offer to a soccer player to $8,000 a year from the original $10,000 because he/she has learned from rival coaches that none of them offerered more than $7,500.
There has to be a restraint of trade issue of some sort in there, silimar to why the Department of Justice went after Ivy League admissions offices 12 or 15 years ago. If I recall correctly, the Ivy League schools were told to stop sharing financial aid offer information on students who applied to multiple schools.
There's one other mandatory read in the series for high school athletes and their parents: NYT reporter Bill Pennington talked to a number of athletes about the hectic pace of college life, especially for players in non-revenue sports. Summary: It's definitely not all fun and games.
And, finally, one more story in the series that might be
