Timeline for implementation of scholarship not yet established
USC will offer four-year athletic scholarships in the future, as opposed to one-year renewable scholarships, according to President Harris Pastides. The timeline for implementing that change, however, has not yet been established.
“I think all of our scholarships ought to be with the understanding that we expect you to keep it all four years,” Pastides told The Daily Gamecock Wednesday afternoon. “It’s that way now, except the offer is for one year. It’s more like, ‘We’ll see how you do.’ Then you come back in at the end of the year and meet with your coach, and you’ve got it. We’re going to change that to be that the expectation is that they have it for four years, but if things are not going well and you’re not holding up your end of the bargain, we’re going to call you in and tell you that you’re not holding up your end of the bargain.”
In a vote on Feb. 17, 62.1 percent of the 330 Division I schools voted for an override of the NCAA legislation that gives schools the option to offer multiyear scholarships, coming in just short of the 62.5 percent required, according to the NCAA.
Pastides said he voted against overriding the rule, as did the majority of the SEC.
A document obtained by the Chronicle of Higher Education showed that Alabama, LSU, Tennessee and future SEC member Texas A&M were the only schools in the conference to vote for the override, although the SEC as a conference did not. Clemson also voted to override.
Pastides said that it’s up to Athletics Director Eric Hyman to work with coaches and determine what the requirements for maintaining the four-year scholarship would be for each sport.
He compared the athletics scholarships to academic in-state lottery scholarships that are renewed each year based on students’ academic performance.
Though athletics scholarships lack such a quantitative threshold, Pastides said if a student-athlete isn’t meeting expectations, then they won’t keep their scholarship. Just as the state regulates the standard for lottery academic scholarships, the coaches will interpret what the standard is.
“I think with an athletic scholarship, it ought to be that you follow the team rules and that you basically do what’s asked,” Pastides said. “That doesn’t mean that you run for a thousand yards. That’s the issue — it’s not, ‘How good are you?,’ it’s, ‘Are you doing what’s being asked?’”
Examples of what constitute grounds for being kicked off a team would include, he said, a student-athlete who was skipping class, flunking out, violating team rules or causing the team to suffer because of an attitude problem. Pastides said judgment would mostly be left up to the coaches because they know better if it’s a pattern of breaking rules.
A student-athlete wouldn’t be dropped, though, if he or she had an injury or was not, for example, running fast enough despite his or her best efforts, Pastides said. He argued if a coach recruited a player, he knew how fast the student-athlete runs, and if it was good enough when the coach was recruiting him or her out of high school, it should be good enough to keep the scholarship. Whether the student-athlete plays is up to the coach and what he or she feels is best for the team, Pastides said.
USC football coach Steve Spurrier has been outspoken in his opposition to multiyear scholarships.
“I just believe you’ve got to earn your way in life, and they think as soon as you sign a kid, you owe him four years,” Spurrier said last October. “I don’t look at it that way. When you sign up for a job in life, very few times do you get guaranteed four years.”
Pastides said that he talked to Spurrier about his intention to make athletic scholarships four-year commitments and that once the legislation was clarified, Spurrier was supportive.
“We’ve had a good meeting of the minds,” Pastides said. “I think that he knows that as long as, for the reasons I described, he can [choose to] not renew an individual scholarship, he has no problem with it. He specifically said that’s what they do all the time anyway, so I think that was somewhat exaggerated that he was outspoken against it. I think in an earlier version, he may have thought it was required and that there was no opportunity for a coach to comment on the attitude of the student.”
Pastides said the NCAA does not have specific guidelines for what constitutes a good or bad reason for revoking a four-year scholarship, and the scholarships don’t necessarily have to be four years long. A team also isn’t required to offer every athlete a multiyear scholarship, though Pastides intends to offer every student-athlete four years.
In the case of a fifth-year senior, a coach would be able to offer a one-year scholarship to the student-athlete.
“Each sport is on a different cycle,” Pastides said. “The exact implementation will depend on where we are in that cycle, but anything going forward from here on in, it would be my expectation that we would work on that four-year commitment.”
Hyman recommended two-year scholarships as opposed to the four-year scholarships in an interview with The Daily Gamecock on Feb. 14.
He said the first year would serve as a transitional year, since, as a freshman, a student-athlete may still be adjusting. The second year would operate how the first year does now under Hyman’s recommendation, as the scholarship would have to be renewed on a year-by-year basis.
Pastides said that a four-year commitment better benefits both the student-athlete and the university, as it encourages athletes to graduate within that time frame.
“It’s an in-between idea,” Pastides said. “I understand where [Hyman] was coming from, but I think people still believe this is a more radical change than it is. In other words, I want our student-athletes to be treated the same way all of our students are when they’re offered a scholarship. You’re asking a person to come to the University of South Carolina, so you don’t want to do a bait and switch. You either want the person, or you’re not sure you want the person. If you’re not sure you want the person, don’t offer them a scholarship ... Whether it’s a promise for two years or for four years, I think that’s a subtle difference. I think the university benefits from a four-year because it gives you the confidence in that they really want me for who I am.”
On Signing Day, Florida coach Will Muschamp and Auburn coach Gene Chizik confirmed that they offered their incoming class four-year scholarships.
Since schools in the SEC are moving towards signing student-athletes such scholarships, Pastides believes that it will eventually be the norm at all the conference’s schools.
“I think we all will (offer four-year scholarships), because we live in a competitive world,” he said. “One or two SEC schools said they were against this, but now that it’s passed, I think they’re going to have a hard time not doing it.”