It is true you cannot "cancel" or "pull" a scholarship during the year, but most scholarships renew on a yearly basis (very rare for more than that). They are one year contracts. The Coach simply has to not renew the scholarship for poor performance. There is no song and dance involved in that. The students only appeal option is to convince the University to give them a scholarship because of the circumstances, but the athletic department is not involved in that and the scholarship would not be for playing on the team anymore.Technically they cannot but coaches can make it very difficult for you to keep it. For example, team meetings are mandatory and if you are 1 minute late a coach can close the door and claim you missed the meeting. They then cite you for violating team rules. Multiple violations no matter how minor are then used as justification for removal from the team. Players know when they are being pushed out even without it being said. If they survive all of that, at their end of the year meeting they are told, “no matter what you ever do, you will never play here so maybe you should hop in the portal and we will help you find another spot”. The coaches rarely help but the kid is better off leaving rather than risking being kicked off the team with a “violation of team rules” stigma. If the team kicks the kid off of the team for poor performance they have to honor the academic portion of the scholarship and they do not want to spend money on a kid not playing football.
Or so I’ve heard.