Reaction to pay-for-play in NCAA is mixed

July 5, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

McClatchy Newspapers

ST. Louis

When Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany last floated a passing interest in an idea, major college athletics were convulsed by his conference’s intention to study expansion in December 2009.

So when Delany casually mentioned last month that the Big Ten had had “a good, open discussion” about “student-athlete welfare,” it could be surmised that he wasn’t just thinking out loud and that he has the clout to put the idea in motion.

And that has brought surging from the back-burner to the forefront a debate over enhancing scholarship benefits — and over the gray line between what once was known as “laundry money” and outright pay for play. Even understood in the most innocent way, Delany’s trial balloon about covering full expenses is more multi-layered and complex than it appears.

All the more so because any such discussion can’t help but be tethered to a slippery slope toward professionalism, a notion trumpeted by South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier recently when he advocated paying players $300 a game out of coaches’ pockets.

Jokes aside about why SEC players would settle for a pay cut, Spurrier’s concept was more brazen and bold than what Delany broached — adjusting the financial difference between a full scholarship and the full cost of attendance.

The gap between the scholarship, which entails tuition, fees, room and board and a book allowance, and the full cost of attendance ranges from $2,000 to $5,000 depending on the institution. The anticipated difference, for example, at Mizzou for the 2011-2012 academic year is approximately $4,300.

In theory, this concept is meant to address gaps in living expenses such as transportation, clothing, incidentals and, say, shortfalls on utilities payments. Even within that framework, though, there would be numerous complications in how to administer even Delany’s more vanilla version of change.

“I think the details on something like that, to work that out, [would be] enormous,” Mizzou athletics director Mike Alden said at the recent Big 12 meetings in Kansas City, noting the difficulty of making it equitable for the range from prosperous Texas to “the lowest levels of Division I as far as budgets are concerned.”

The issue has the potential to become a breakaway wedge between the six powerhouse conferences and the rest of Division I athletics.

University of Texas athletics director DeLoss Dodds, a proponent of helping student-athletes meet the total cost of attendance, acknowledged that possibility in Kansas City. While noting most university leaders wouldn’t want to leave peers behind and have “bigger things in their worlds” than the structure of athletics competition, he added, “I’ve always been in favor of a federated kind of NCAA, where like schools vote together on common issues. So maybe that answers your question. The BCS would be a category.”

From somewhat the other end of the spectrum sits Southern Illinois University-Carbondale athletics director Mario Moccia, whose program is at the level formerly known as Division 1-AA. Moccia believes such a change would “cripple” SIUC and other schools that couldn’t afford the difference and is concerned about where it’s going.

“The golden rule: Those who have the gold make the rules,” Moccia said.

While he believes the NCAA is fundamentally against it and that the Division I voting membership would vote it down resoundingly, he also wonders if this rumbling is the first in a series of probes.

“Probes find weaknesses,” he said.

At its simplest level, the idea of adding money above full scholarship might seem unobjectionable, especially as long-term conference television contracts are blossoming into the billions of dollars.

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville AD Brad Hewitt’s school is amid a years-long movement into Division I. To him, a move to go above full scholarship money not only would be a harsh blow to the effort but also would threaten the dynamics of a collegiate sporting culture that exists “nowhere else in the world.”

“That’s the ‘pay for play’ mentality,” he said. “I think once you cross [that threshold], it is a fine line. To me, it’s not blurry.”