HOW ATHLETIC SCHOLARSHIPS WORK
By David Galehouse - Director of
www.varsityedge.com
- Student-athlete resource center for high school and college bound athletes and author of
The Making of a Student-Athlete
: Succeeding in the College Selection, Application, and Athletic Recruiting Process.
Scholarships are a confusing topic and families have been conditioned to believe that there are plenty of athletic scholarships available at any and every school. Athletic scholarships are only offered at the D1 & D2 NCAA level and at NAIA and Junior Colleges. There are
no
athletic scholarships at the Ivy League and D3 level as these programs are only allowed to offer financial aid. Many families automatically dismiss D3 athletics for this reason, but it's often possible to get a more attractive financial aid package from a D3 school than an athletic package from a D1 & D2 school. In reality, only 49% of all NCAA D1 and D2 athletes receive "some" athletic scholarship money and some could only be a few hundred dollars a year.
The good news
There are roughly 327 NCAA Division One teams that offer men’s basketball and all D1 teams offer the maximum of 13 athletic scholarships for men.
There are roughly 324 NCAA Division One teams that offer women’s basketball and all D1 teams offer 15 athletic scholarships for women.
There are roughly 278 D2 men’s basketball teams and 276 D2 women’s basketball teams. These teams are allowed to offer 10 scholarships per team, but unlike scholarships at the D1 level, it is up to the school to decide how many to actually offer, and how many they offer will be largely based on the success of the school, the program, and how much money the school allocates to basketball and other sports.
There are 390 D3 men’s basketball teams and 422 D3 women’s basketball teams. D3 college do not offer athletic scholarships for any sport.
These numbers will vary slightly as colleges add and remove athletic programs at their discretion.
The Bad News
Let’s say a D1 men’s team has 13 players on it - that’s 4,251 players (13 players x 326 teams). D1 basketball has a rule called the 5/8 rule. Without going into great detail, it basically says that basketball coaches cannot recruit more than 5 players in one year and no more than 8 players in two years. The rule was established to make sure that coaches were not recruiting many talented players, then having tryouts and choosing the very best players and getting rid of the other players. The rule has also been relaxed to account for some transfer students as well as players that leave a program early for the NBA.
Most college basketball teams have between 3 or 4 scholarships available each year to give to potential recruits. We will look at these numbers in two ways, one by using 3 scholarships a year and the other by using 4 scholarships per year.
If there are 327 teams that give out an average of 3 basketball scholarships a year, that works out to 981 D1 men’s basketball scholarships each year.
With 4 scholarships a year, the available scholarship figure goes to 1,308 D1 men’s basketball scholarships each year.
Now this might sound like a lot, but lets look at it this way. Since coaches compete for athletes throughout the entire country, if you divide 981 scholarships by 50 states, you get 19.62 D1 men’s basketball scholarships per state. Imagine if someone in the state of California put every high school basketball senior in a room and said "only 19 of you sitting here will get a Division 1 basketball scholarship!" You would probably get a lot of laughs from the crowd, but it’s true. You also need to factor in the number of players coming from foreign countries. Basketball is a global sport and many foreign players are coming to U.S. Colleges to compete, thus reducing the number of scholarships awarded to U.S. players even more.
Now, some people will tell you that since there are hundreds of thousands of high school basketball players playing basketball, your chances of receiving an athletic scholarship are very slim. In reality, this statement makes
NO
sense for a number of reasons. (1) Not every high school basketball player has the desire to play at the college level. (2) Not every high school basketball player has the skills to play Division One basketball. So, in reality, you are competing with a much smaller pool of players that have both the desire and skills to play basketball at the college level and be awarded a basketball scholarship.
Lets look at scholarships in more detail.
Full Scholarships
Full scholarships are just what they sound like. Your tuition, room and board, meals, and books are paid for. Full scholarships are actually very rare. While there are plenty of full scholarships for D1 football and basketball players, very few other sports at the D1 & D2 level offer full scholarships to individual athletes. Its easy for football and basketball and sometimes hockey, because they often bring in hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars for the school through attendance and TV contracts, but how many people pay to go see a college golf match or rowing match?
After the first full scholarship offer has been extended to you, you may find that you get many other scholarship offers from other schools that suddenly think you are a legitimate player, some even from schools that haven’t seen you play. If one school thinks you are that good, it’s safe for the other schools to assume you can play for them as well. This happens a lot in football and basketball as many teams compete for the same players and one coach’s faith in a player can signal other coaches.
Partial Scholarships
A coach takes the available scholarship money and divides it up among several players. The coach may choose to offer $20,000 to one S-A or $1,000 to 20 S-A's. This is the
most common
use of scholarship money as only a few teams and sports have enough money to reward everyone on the team a full athletic scholarship. Since available scholarships are converted into available dollar amounts, a coach will usually offer you a dollar amount per year and not a percentage like 25%. Some families get caught up in trying to figure out if their scholarship covers, classes, room and board, or books. Simply look at a scholarship as a sum of money towards your entire tuition bill. If you have the skills to play D1 basketball, you don’t have to worry about partial scholarships because they are not offered, but partial scholarships can and will be offered at the D3 level.
Renewal of Scholarships
Scholarships are
not
guaranteed
for four years but
renewed each year
. Some schools will verbally guarantee them for all 4+ years you are at the school. If coaches at bigger schools with well-known reputations started revoking scholarships of players because they didn’t play well after a year, those coaches would never be able to sign another recruit. A D1 or D2 institution must inform you by July 1 in writing whether your grant for the upcoming year has been renewed. If your scholarship is not renewed, you can request a hearing with school officials outside of the athletic department. We haven't come across any cases of scholarships not being renewed because of poor athletic performance, and a school doing this to even one recruit would probably cause more harm to their recruiting efforts. It can happen when new coaches are hired though!
Reduction or Cancellation of Scholarship -
Under the following conditions, your scholarship can be removed:
1 - You become ineligible for intercollegiate competition.
2 - You fraudulently misrepresent info on an application, Letter of Intent or financial aid agreement.
3 - Engage in conduct warranting substantial disciplinary penalty.
4 - Voluntarily withdraw from your sport on your own.
Remember - when you accept a scholarship, you cannot quit the team and expect a free education. If you cannot afford school, it may be your only chance to get a college education, but fulfilling your obligations to a coach and program may actually cause your education to suffer. The irony is worth mentioning.
Don’t assume a school has scholarships available or no scholarships available. It’s important to ask each individual coach what is available at that particular institution. If the coach thinks you are interested in coming to the school and you don’t even ask for scholarship money, they might not offer it.
Other Options
Grants, non-athletic scholarships - and financial aid. It's probable that you will find more financial aid money at a particular school than athletic scholarship money. NCAA D3 doesn’t offer athletic scholarships, but you might be surprised how generous some schools are able to make your financial aid package. This is especially true for schools with institutional aid, (aid that is dispersed after federal monies are awarded). The criteria for institutional aid is strictly up to the school!
For example:
Some wealthy alumni might have endowed the school a scholarship for a S-A who overcame extreme hardship to excel and move on to college. The winner of that has a full ride, but it’s not an athletic scholarship. One football coach who used to work at a D3 school in Ohio told us that it was routine for teams in their conference to take the aid offer that a rival school gave to a top recruit, and say to the folks in financial aid, "come on, we need to win here, what can you do for us" and a lot of times they were able to match the rivals package. This isn't supposed to go on, and it doesn’t at all schools, but it happens.
NAIA Scholarships
On April 1, 2003, Concordia College (CA) def. Mountain State (W.Va.) 88-84 to win the NAIA D1 men’s basketball championship. How many of you knew that? Probably less than the number of people who know that Syracuse won the NCAA basketball championship the same year. What is the point? The point is that the NAIA has plenty of good programs, talented athletes, excellent coaches, and they do have championships!
The majority of NAIA schools are in the south, mid-west and far west part of the U.S., but there are a few in most states. There are roughly 330 NAIA schools. In general, NAIA schools are small, private institutions, and athletics are competitive, but are not afforded a large budget like many NCAA schools. At the NAIA D1 level, there are 11 basketball scholarships offered. At the NAIA D2 level, there are 6 basketball scholarships offered. Again, this is assuming that a particular school in fact offers that many.
Division 3 Athletics
While D3 colleges cannot offer athletic scholarships (they are not allowed) many D3 programs offer far superior academic programs to D1 or D2 colleges and offer far more financial aid than you might find at a D1 or D2 college. As we stated earlier, many families and players dismiss D3 programs because they are so focused on getting an athletic scholarship, rather than focused on finding the college that provides them the best fit for their skills and desires. Since there are not that many scholarship opportunities in basketball and it takes a high degree of skill to play at the D1 level, many of you would be best served by finding other programs where your skills would be a better fit and will offer you a chance to play college basketball. There are many amazing programs out there and you need to work hard at finding a program that is a good match for your skills and desires.