New coach pulls women's basketball player's scholarship

Some people here act like a college athletics scholarship is a God-given right to anyone who can walk and chew gum at the same time, so long as they go to class and try hard. That's not the case. Academic scholarship, like athletics scholarships, are renewable year-by-year and can be freely revoked.

Many schools discourage athletics programs from revoking scholarships for public relations reasons and because most schools recognize that a coach should be charged with some duty to make wise decisions in awarding scholarships.

That said, being awarded an athletic scholarship does not instill a right to a four-year free ride for anyone who is lucky enough to have received a scholarship offer. Surely a coach should expect an athlete to meet some minimum standard to keep his/her scholarship. Why hold athletic scholarship recipients to a lower standard than academic scholarship recipients?

And as for the women's basketball issue specifically, it was true at the place I covered that women's basketball spent more dollars per fan than any other sport on campus, and that it was the worst sport I ever covered. Like most of us here, I base my comments on personal experience, but I do understand that my personal experience might not be representative of the broader trend (although my guess is that it is).

 

Agreed. Attending class, getting good grades, participating to the best of one's ability in practice and in games should be the minimum standards. And if the player gets hurt along the way, and the college revokes her scholarship, the college should be sued.

 

The NCAA has medical scholarships just for that purpose. You put a kid on medical scholarship and he can never re-join the team but he gets to keep his/her scholarship and the team is not "charged" for that kid's scholarship and may go out and sign another kid to replace him. I think generally when a kid has his/her scholarship pulled it is for not meeting some basic requirement of the coach, such as having a bad attitude, not being on time, not working hard, etc. I'm sure there are exceptions.

 

Sounds good. Offer her one. Then she can decide if she wants a Maine education or one from somewhere else.

 

If she hurts herself playing basketball and they revoke her scholarship because of it, that sounds like a lawsuit to me.

 

It amazes me sometimes that we have journalists on this board - people who are supposed to know what the fuck they're talking about but instead make asinine assumptions and generalizations and report them as truth.

You "guess" that is the standard across the country based on your personal experience with one school and your dislike for women's basketball? If you are going to join the bandwagon of the football coaches' association, and you repeated their argument almost verbatim, you need to learn the facts. I don't care if that puts you in disagreement with me or not. Act like a real journalist and use some real facts to back up your assertions.

Schools are required to have equal budgets and put forth equal effort for sports. It's part of the legal interpretation of Title IX. Operating budgets, recruiting budgets and yes, marketing budgets should be about the same for men's and women's basketball. It's not about "per fan" spending. That's a bullshit figure that you made up. There are a lot of shitty men's teams across the country that spend big dollars and have few fans.

 

I'd find a lawyer and sue 'em for worker's comp. You are being compensated for your work with a scholarship. You were injured on the job. Now you don't have the job and you don't have the compensation. That would be an interesting one.

 

I don't understand how anyone can think that a player should be punished for a coach misjudging talent. If the player is lazy, by all means, revoke the scholly. If the player is too hurt to contribute, by all mean, put them on a medical.

But if not, the kid should stay on scholarship.

This isn't a complicated issue, in my mind.

If you go in that living room and promise that a school will take care of a kid, the school has to take care of that kid if they behave, get good grades and maximize their potential on the field.

 

If I have children, and they are recruited to play a college sport, they will NEVER play for a coach who has EVER taken away someone's scholarship for misjudged talent. I don't care if it happened in a regime change. It's chickenshit in every way.

Like I said, if you can find them a scholarship somewhere else, have them transfer. That's fine. Put them on a medical, that's fine. But don't just take it away. That's not the kid's fault, and every coach in every sport promises the parents every opportunity for a paid-for degree.

If the player works their butt off and doesn't get any better, that is the coach's problem. Find them a smaller school, or find them a role on the team.

 

Damn straight. Why do you think there are no linemen on scholarship anywhere?

 

I'm not sure what you're arguing with yourself about, but all the bullshit in your post in no way addresses anything in mine.

 

But is the understanding that the coach can choose not to renew the scholarship for any reason he or she sees fit one of the provisions that is in writing?
Is the provision that renewal depends on satisfactory athletic performance in writing?