San Antonio Express-News article...
Full cost of attendance will benefit student-athletes, but raises questions
...Obviously, paying these costs will be easier for those schools at the top of the food chain. With booming revenues from their television partners, conference payouts and the College Football Playoff, these 65 “Power Five” schools will be able to provide for their athletes through that funding. Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione has estimated the cost for cost of attendance payments for all Sooner scholarship athletes at more than $1 million per year.
But where will that leave the other 63 FBS programs, including schools such as UTSA and Texas State, that have recently joined that group?
UTSA athletic director Lynn Hickey said her school is committed to providing these benefits.
“Our goal is to be a part of that, but we don’t know how quickly we will and what amount we’ll be able to jump into it with,” Hickey said. “It’s all about resources. This is permissive legislation and we don’t have to do it, but because of the competitiveness of our peers, we’ll have to do it. The timing for us isn’t great, but we’re working on getting it done.”
Conference USA will help its schools provide cost of attendance funding with the granting of a $450,000 per school payment during the next three years from conference reserves.
“The idea behind it is that we’ve been in support of it from the beginning,” C-USA associate commissioner Courtney Morrison-Archer said. “It’s just a way for us assist in that process.”
The conference’s funding will help C-USA schools remain competitive in the initial stages with the “Power Five” schools.
“We’ll try to do everything we can do to help our student-athletes with this,” UTEP athletic director Bob Stull said. “Financial aid is the right thing to do, but it’s kind of a sudden thing that many of us didn’t have budgeted in our fiscal plans.
“The challenge is that financially for the top five conferences it’s different than it is for anybody else because their television revenue has exploded. For everybody else, we haven’t realized that revenue spike, and it becomes a challenge for us to match.” .....
Full cost of attendance will benefit student-athletes, but raises questions
...Obviously, paying these costs will be easier for those schools at the top of the food chain. With booming revenues from their television partners, conference payouts and the College Football Playoff, these 65 “Power Five” schools will be able to provide for their athletes through that funding. Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione has estimated the cost for cost of attendance payments for all Sooner scholarship athletes at more than $1 million per year.
But where will that leave the other 63 FBS programs, including schools such as UTSA and Texas State, that have recently joined that group?
UTSA athletic director Lynn Hickey said her school is committed to providing these benefits.
“Our goal is to be a part of that, but we don’t know how quickly we will and what amount we’ll be able to jump into it with,” Hickey said. “It’s all about resources. This is permissive legislation and we don’t have to do it, but because of the competitiveness of our peers, we’ll have to do it. The timing for us isn’t great, but we’re working on getting it done.”
Conference USA will help its schools provide cost of attendance funding with the granting of a $450,000 per school payment during the next three years from conference reserves.
“The idea behind it is that we’ve been in support of it from the beginning,” C-USA associate commissioner Courtney Morrison-Archer said. “It’s just a way for us assist in that process.”
The conference’s funding will help C-USA schools remain competitive in the initial stages with the “Power Five” schools.
“We’ll try to do everything we can do to help our student-athletes with this,” UTEP athletic director Bob Stull said. “Financial aid is the right thing to do, but it’s kind of a sudden thing that many of us didn’t have budgeted in our fiscal plans.
“The challenge is that financially for the top five conferences it’s different than it is for anybody else because their television revenue has exploded. For everybody else, we haven’t realized that revenue spike, and it becomes a challenge for us to match.” .....
