Earlier this year, exercising newly granted autonomy, the Power Five conferences passed a measure that will allow schools to provide scholarship athletes with cost-of-attendance stipends.
It is a ruling designed to help improve the standard of living for athletes operating in a highly-regulated environment that has become a multi-billion dollar industry.
The stipends are determined under federally-created guidelines and are designed to assist student athletes with life expenses that fall outside of their athletic scholarships.
The new rules will take effect during the 2015-16 athletic calendar.
The question is how this impacts Penn State, one of the 79 schools that voted to support of the stipends.
Penn State currently recognizes 362 scholarship athletes out of a total of just over 800. According to a university spokesperson, Penn State anticipates the annual cost of these stipends will be about $1.7 to $1.75 million annually.
Full scholarship athletes can receive the full annual benefits — what is anticipated to be nearly $4,700 a year. Partial scholarship athletes where sports may divide up full scholarships to multiple team members will receive a percentage of the full stipend that reflects their scholarship.
Interestingly enough, while the method of calculating the cost of attendance comes from federally-created standards, that actual value will vary from school to school given various factors. For example, Clemson reportedly anticipates the stipends to fall in $3,600 range while Auburn may spend upwards of $6,000 per student athlete. Penn State’s cost should fall in the middle range.
But how does that impact the sports programs?
Three of the biggest in State College find themselves in a different situations.
On The Field:
James Franklin briefly mentioned the change on Signing Day, with his most interesting comments reported later by the USA Today. Franklin noted that only one of the 25 players signed even asked about the stipend. He expects that to change.
“There’s going to be much more awareness of it and people are going to be using it,” Franklin said to the USA Today. “The (schools) that are above other (schools) in terms of the amount of aid they’re going to be able to give, they’re going to be throwing that number around. For anybody to think this won’t be a factor in the process next year is being really naïve.”
What will be most interesting is how it truly impacts recruiting. As noted above, the range in which schools are able to provide to their student athletes is noticeable. Will high school athletes go to a school they dislike because of an extra $500 in their pockets?
Ultimately, Penn State is going to provide its student athletes with a number close enough to what Ohio State offers that recruiting should come down to simply what it always has: Winning.
Money might flip a recruit here or there, but as things stand right now Penn State and Ohio State ought to be recruiting the same kids, and the Buckeye’s national title will likely carry more weight than the thought of some extra spending money.
On The Court:
Down the road from the Lasch Building and Franklin’s plans there is a very different world. Head basketball coach Pat Chambers knows that the money is an asset, but it doesn’t change the underlying value of the bigger picture. You have to win.
“It should help, you would think,” Chambers said earlier this week. “We’re in a good place when it comes to the stipend. It should help recruiting, it should. Especially when you get that and then you get a Pell Grant on top of it. That’s good stuff. But we’ve still got to win games, it comes down to winning games and changing perception. I’ve said that for four years and I’ll continue to say it until this thing turns.”
“(Recruits) haven’t asked about it, but we bring it up. We bring it up. Because I think that’s something that we can utilize.”
For Penn State basketball the opportunity might be a bit bigger than football. Not every kid playing basketball will be recruited by a Power Five school. Not every kid will be choosing between Penn State and another school in the Power Five. If nothing else, it’s another asset Chambers has to offer.
But as he said, you have to win.
On The Ice:
Penn State hockey is perhaps in the most interesting position of all. The Nittany Lions are one of nine Power Five schools with a hockey program. Of the nearly 60 schools in Division I hockey, only nine can say at this moment that they’ll have that extra money to give to their athletes.
Does that help lure in a few more prospects? It sure does.
“It’s a huge asset,” said Penn State assistant Keith Fisher. “We don’t know exactly how it’s all going to pan out in terms of the exact number just yet, but it is a big advantage. I know other schools are going to match what we’re doing. It doesn’t matter if they’re a Power Five school or not, I know North Dakota is probably going to match, I know that Boston University and UMass-Lowell (may match). It’s going to create ripple effects across hockey because the price just went up for their schools.”
“But it’s definitely an advantage because we can recruit a kid and tell him that we can give him a little extra money to spend to buy some clothes or maybe buy some pizza on Sunday night or something like that.”
So for Penn State, the Nittany Lions find themselves ahead of the curve for once even though the program is less than a three years old. It’s a chance to maybe have a little something extra that other schools don’t have to offer yet.
But as Fisher noted, college hockey’s dominance by schools with smaller budgets than the Power Five conferences hasn’t slowed down their success. And simply put, there are too many hockey players for all the good ones to go to Power Five schools.
“There are only so many schools doing it right now, and there are so many great opportunities at other schools and only so many players that Penn State, Michigan, Michigan State, the Big Ten conference, can recruit. They can’t take every player. There are a lot of opportunities for kids to go out and play college hockey.
“Will it help Power Five conference schools? Sure. But those other schools will find a way like they always have.”
And that brings us back to the theme. As much as the extra money can help each of these programs in different sorts of ways, college athletes are largely in it for two things. An education and to win. And money can’t really buy you either of those things.
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