March 18, 2008

Expectations Lose to Reality of Sports Scholarships by Bill Pennington

Koach Karl brings you another great article on Scholarships:

Expectations Lose to Reality of Sports Scholarships
By BILL PENNINGTON New York Times March 10, 2008

At youth sporting events, the sidelines have become the ritual community meeting place, where families sit in rows of folding chairs aligned like church pews. These congregations are diverse in spirit but unified by one gospel: heaven is your child receiving a college athletic scholarship.

Parents sacrifice weekends and vacations to tournaments and specialty camps, spending thousands each year in this quest for the Holy Grail. But the expectations of parents and athletes can differ sharply from the financial and cultural realities of college athletics, according to an analysis by The New York Times of previously undisclosed data from the National Collegiate Athletic Association and interviews with dozens of college officials.

Excluding the glamour sports of football and basketball, the average N.C.A.A. athletic scholarship is nowhere near a full ride, amounting to $8,707. In sports like baseball or track and field, the number is routinely as low as $2,000. Even when football and basketball are included, the average is $10,409. Tuition and room and board for N.C.A.A. institutions often cost between $20,000 and $50,000 a year.

People run themselves ragged to play on three teams at once so they could always reach the next level, said Margaret Barry of Laurel, Md., whose daughter is a scholarship swimmer at the University of Delaware. "They're going to be disappointed when they learn that if they are very lucky, they will get a scholarship worth 15 percent of the $40,000 college bill. What's that? $6,000?"

Within the N.C.A.A. data, last collected in 2003-4 and based on N.C.A.A. calculations from an internal study, are other statistical insights about the distribution of money for the 138,216 athletes who received athletic aid in Division I and Division II. Men received 57 percent of all scholarship money, but in 11 of the 14 sports with men's and women's teams, the women's teams averaged higher amounts per athlete. On average, the best-paying sport was neither football nor men's or women's basketball. It was men’s ice hockey, at $21,755. Next was women's ice hockey ($20,540). The lowest overall average scholarship total was in men's riflery ($3,608), and the lowest for women was in bowling ($4,899). Baseball was the second-lowest men's sport ($5,806).

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