Increased Scholarship limits

[SpiderTrap]

With a recent NCAA settlement - scholarship amounts will increase for many sports in the 25-26 season. The biggest increase may be baseball, with the current scholarship limit of 11.7 moving to 34 full ride scholarships. BUT - the roster limit is cut down from 40 to 34 as well. So basically - every baseball player can get a full ride, but 6 less players.

It is totally up to the school to increase their scholarships because of the investment required on the school part and the title IX implications. Anyone see any chance that UR increases baseball to 34? Or would they follow similar arguments that were used to add lacrosse and eliminate soccer and track that this would dumb down the student pool with more athletes, too much money, etc.

Or maybe UR just increases slightly to about 15 or 20 full rides? I can see this having a bad trickle effect within the school and mid-majors in general.

 

[SFspidur]

We're not even giving the current max. I don't see us increasing much for baseball, if at all.

 

[SpiderTrap]

Do we think other A10 schools will increase and if so - does this push us even further back in sports NON-Basketball ? There is a substantial increase for lacrosse as well - moving from 12.6 to 48.

Guessing we will not increase there either.

If not - and other A10 schools do increase (if not fully, but partially) do we fall even further behind and do we look more and more like a "Patriotic" league school?

 

[SFspidur]

I honestly don't see the A-10 boosting much...the money just isn't there. Most programs will add the extra men's hoops scholarships to stay competitive there, and maybe a select few others elsewhere in programs they want to emphasize, but nothing huge.

 

[MDspider8]

There is a path to fielding a more talented roster with these changes but I'm not sure how realistic it is. It would be nice to get enough funding to increase to 16-ish scholarships and then spread it out across 32 players or something like that. With the roster limits there is something like 75ish/90ish players in each high major conference that will need to find a new home, but it remains to be seen whether we'll take advantage of that or not.

 

[SpiderTrap]

I honestly don't see the A-10 boosting much...the money just isn't there. Most programs will add the extra men's hoops scholarships to stay competitive there, and maybe a select few others elsewhere in programs they want to emphasize, but nothing huge.

I agree with this - but just wonder if 1 or 2 schools take the leap, somehow financially - and start funding these extra scholarships aggressively - would it truly give them the upper hand and make them somewhat dominant in these "other sports" because they are competing in their league largely against teams who are much more underfunded in terms of scholarship players.

Main sports that would come to mind - Baseball, Lacrosse, Soccer (increasing from 9.9 to 28). Of course you have to offset the investment with Women's sports as well for title IX - but can you "buy" titles in these areas with more scholarships and is it "worth" it? From a mid-major standpoint? What do you gain if you win the A10 in Baseball, soccer, and Lacrosse on a consistent basis. Maybe if you make a run to college world series and/or final four of lacrosse I guess - but thats a big if because remember - the power programs in those sports will certainly increase their limits - no questions asked.

 

[Eight Legger]

Is there no Title IX equality to take into consideration any more? Because if there is, I’d say there’s even less of a chance we do anything

 

[SFspidur]

My understanding is that Title IX will still apply regarding scholarships since those come directly from the school. I’m less clear on some of the other pieces like the $20 million/year revenue sharing the big boys will be able to offer.

 

[SpiderTrap]

Is there no Title IX equality to take into consideration any more? Because if there is, I’d say there’s even less of a chance we do anything

Title IX still applies. So while you may want to increase baseball scholarships to the max, you will need to find a similar increase for women - which you can probably do because the increases are across the board, but I agree - given our recent history - I don't see us doing this.

Some experts are saying this could actually lead to cutting sports as schools (likely lower end conference, maybe some mid-majors) may focus all their attention on a handful of sports and drop others in order to do so and stay Title IX compliant.

Use UR as example - not saying we would do this. But we could increase scholarships in baseball to the max, but in order to do so - drop 1-2 other sports, so that the money used on them could be used to fund those baseball scholarships and drop sports that help balance the Title IX spending. I could see lower end schools doing this.

It will also be interesting to see how many of our peer schools (mid-majors we compete with) work this out. This will definetley create a further divide among the haves and have nots.

 

[SFspidur]

Keep in mind that Division I membership requires sponsoring at least 14 sports, including minimums of either 7 male/7 female or 6 male/8 female.

We're currently at 17 with 7 male/10 female, so we could trim a bit if we wanted to go that direction, but not more than one male sport could be cut. (Technically they could also cut a higher-scholarship sport like baseball to add a lower-scholarship sport and still be in compliance.)

I don't really see us going that route of cutting sports to boost scholarships elsewhere, but others may want to do that and some might already be close to the NCAA sponsorship minimums.

At least until some other lawsuit comes along and blows up those NCAA requirements too.

 

[urfan1]

I'm not sure they would not cut, they did it in the past, LAX for track and soccer.

 

[AnnapSpider]

I'm not sure they would not cut, they did it in the past, LAX for track and soccer.

Seems like we have invested a lot of dollars in baseball facilities. I don’t think cuts
are in the works.

 

[urfan1]

Seems like we have invested a lot of dollars in baseball facilities. I don’t think cuts
are in the works.

I did not mention a particular sport, only posted they might do it as they have in the past.

 

[GKiller]

If UR decided to go nearly all-in on increasing ships for most of our programs they would cut football.