Oh I'm sure every school will try to outdo each other. They will have no choice. Today it's Texas offering $10k, tomorrow it's OSU or 'Bama offering $25k. The bigger the school, the larger the alumni base, and more wallets to draw upon to pay for all of this. Before cash stipends there were other under the table deals, and for the high school recruit which college had the best parties and the hostesses that showed them the best time. Some of these state schools rely very little on the state governments that have chopped their budgets to the bone, and get almost all of their budgets through tuition, donations, royalties, and so on. Some of these schools have fundraisers to raise a billion dollars from their alumni. The amount of cash pouring in to some of these schools that does not come from tax dollars is just astounding, and it's no wonder we are seeing this manifest itself in the athletic departments. I mean what else are they gonna do with the extra hundreds of millions? Cure cancer? Pffft. There are fooosball games to win, Cletus. How, or whether or not UConn should try, to keep up the with Joneses is the question, but my opinion is that they won't be able, and quite frankly I'm not sure I want them to.
P5 or not, UConn will not be the basketball capital of the world forever. Maybe the P5 thing is not necessarily the best move for the university as a whole? It might help to extend basketball dominance for a few more years than otherwise, but at what cost?
I wouldn't worry. No one is going to be offering women $10k to play college basketball. If that day ever came it would be long after Geno left anyway.
ZOMG!!!! WE'RE DOOMED!!!
I think the conference already came out in favor of offering the same benefits. They just weren't sure if they were going to be allowed to. But again, at what point do the AAC schools change their mind? Is it when they realize they can only afford $2k/yr stipends when the big schools are all offering $10k+/yr? At some point the little schools will be priced out of the market for top talent. Eventually the P5 will have their own basketball tournament as well, and those on the outside will participate in a more scaled down version of the NCAA tournament. Maybe it merges with the NIT and takes on an intramural sports type feel with actual honest to goodness student athletes.
If you offer the stipend to one sport you have to offer the stipend to EVERY other sport at the school. So yes it will affect Basketball a great deal.
Aren't the P5 conferences part of the NCAA still? If the NCAA tried stopping a school NOT in the P5 from doing it, I imagine lawsuits would ensue. Unless the P5 completely breaks away from the NCAA, I dont' see where that's an issue, or maybe I'm just not understanding the situation, which is highly possible!
Correct. Texas' budget for this is $6 million/year, which covers 600 athletes. UCONN cannot pay 1 cent, even if they wanted and could afford to.
I would assume they eventually fully break away from the NCAA. This is just the first step. Then they'll reclass football and men's basketball players as employees of the school which will basically be a technicality.
P5 basically threatened to leave the NCAA, which is how they got these concessions. I thought $5000 was the maximum, or "suggested" stipend. Also thought consideration for the university profiting from sale of the player's image was supposed to be kept in a trust for after graduation.
