The Myth of the Athletic Scholarship by JOHN MILLEA, Star Tribune

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1 The Myth of the Athletic Scholarship by JOHN MILLEA, Star Tribune Kevin Kray's dream was coming true. The Osseo High School senior wanted to play baseball at the University of Minnesota, and his parents wanted to hear the words that all parents of college-bound athletes dream of: We are offering your child a free education. "When somebody comes and says they're interested in your son, you think, 'Hey, maybe he can get a full ride,' " said Ann Kray, Kevin's mother. Kevin is the oldest of Ann and Dana Kray's three children, and the family had no prior experience with the mysterious world of college athletic scholarships. The family had assumed, as many people do, that full rides are commonplace. "I don't come from a family with a lot of money, and I was hoping the U would be able to help me out," Kevin Kray said. Said Ann Kray: "It's kind of like people's wages, you don't hear people discuss it. In the back of your mind you maybe think they got a full ride. At least that's your perception." Like it does for countless families, though, perception turned into a much different reality for the Krays. Full scholarships are rare in many college sports, and the realities of the scholarship world are just as elusive as the scholarships themselves. But this much is certain: A precious few high school athletes are rewarded with college scholarships each year. The numbers don't lie: For every 100 high school athletes, there is one full athletic scholarship available. More than 60 percent of all NCAA athletes receive no athletic scholarship aid. This includes Division III, which does not give out athletic aid. The average NCAA athlete on scholarship gets, per year, about $10,000 less than the value of a full scholarship. Minnesota offered Kevin Kray a scholarship that would cover less than half the cost of a year's education -- a total that is about $19,000 at the U of M, including room, board and books. He accepted, knowing that the size of his scholarship can be increased in the future, depending on his pitching

2 performance. "We had to kind of take a step back," Ann Kray said. "At first we thought, 'Wow, you don't get full rides, huh?' Initially he had the dream of being able to get college paid for through athletics. It's kind of a bummer, you work just as hard and train just as hard, but there's not as much money for sports like baseball." Think about that the next time you hear of high schools holding signing-day ceremonies, when top athletes put pen to paper and agree to accept college scholarships in front of television and newspapers cameras, proud parents and envious classmates. Because it's likely that most of those young athletes are receiving a very small slice of the scholarship pie. "They invest all this money to get potentially 25 to 33 percent of a scholarship," Gophers baseball coach John Anderson said. "I shake my head a little bit and think, 'You're better off taking that money and putting it in the bank.' People are a little bit shocked by how little aid we have. If you get 30 to 40 percent of a full ride, you're doing pretty good." The myth of money Like most college sports, baseball doesn't have nearly enough scholarships to give everybody a full ride. The NCAA Division I baseball limit is 11.7 full rides, which Anderson tries to split up over a roster that can have 35 players. Men's tennis has only 4.5 scholarships, wrestling 9.9, softball 12 and cross-country/track and field has 12.6 for men and 18 for women. Those are some of the "equivalency" sports, which generally spread small amounts of scholarship money throughout the roster. Athletes in such sports, like track and field, are considered to be "on scholarship" even though they are likely getting a very small percentage of their school paid for and footing the bill for the rest out of pocket. Then there are the Division I "head count" sports -- football, men's and women's basketball, women's volleyball, women's tennis and women's gymnastics. That designation means every athlete receiving a scholarship in those sports gets a full ride. "There is so much misinformation out there. And the biggest one is that full rides grow on trees," said Phil Lundin, the longtime Gophers men's track coach who this year became men's track and cross-country coach at

3 Division III St. Olaf College. Lundin said he felt like a Robin Hood figure when breaking up scholarships for his track team, which averaged 60 athletes in his 13 years as Gophers coach. "One year we had close to 50 on some form of athletic aid," he said. "I sliced that pie so thin you wouldn't have believed it. But everybody got a little bit." Very few of Lundin's athletes received a full ride. Many more got what are called "starter" or "book" scholarships, usually enough aid to pay for books and little else. Even fewer scholarships are available on the Division II level. Scholarship athletes in D-II receive, on average, $6,000 a year -- less than half of the $14,000 those at the D-I level get. The Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference, comprised primarily of Division II schools in Minnesota, allows its football programs to offer only 24 scholarships while the NCAA permits D-II schools to offer up to 36. Even so, NSIC member Minnesota Duluth won the D-II national championship game Saturday. The D-I Gophers, by contrast, give out 85 football scholarships. The NCAA allows no athletic aid on the Division III level, although that doesn't mean some D-III colleges don't find ways to help their top athletes. One way is by awarding "leadership" scholarships to athletes who have displayed some form of leadership, even if it was just being a class officer in high school. Talking about money creates an uneasy dynamic between coaches, players and their families. It's a process coaches often go into with feelings of dread -- a sentiment families soon share. "I think the hardest thing in our business is you have to put a value on somebody," said Anderson, the Gophers baseball coach. "Somebody will say, 'How come you think I'm worth 25 [percent of a scholarship] and soand-so [at another college] says I'm worth 55?' That's the most demeaning part of my job, having to put a value on a player. It's not that you don't like them as a player. You want them in your program, but 'here are our limitations.' People have a hard time with that." Myth: Athletes have it easy For all the athletes who land full rides and have a great college experience, there are many stories that go wildly off script. Some athletes are promised

4 a scholarship, only to see it yanked because of a coaching change or other reasons. Some start at the Division I level but are overwhelmed by the total commitment that is necessary, the 16-hour days of practice, training, meetings, classes and mandatory study halls, which leave room for nothing else, not even a social life. Gophers football player Ned Tavale, a junior from Cretin-Derham Hall, said coaches joked about "signing my life over to them," but the reality is it isn't far from the truth. Some overwhelmed Division I athletes transfer to Division II or III schools, hoping to strike a greater balance in their lives. The trade-off is giving up a dream of playing at the highest level for the overall college experience. Money also is a factor. Former Wayzata football player Tommy Becker left the University of Minnesota, where he was receiving a full ride, for D-III St. Thomas and no athletic aid. He hesitated about leaving his full ride behind, "but I was unhappy and I didn't want to cheat the Gophers out of a scholarship by not being committed," he said. Mike Moberg played basketball at Maple Grove and accepted a scholarship at Division I Niagara (N.Y.) University even though he said he "didn't have a huge passion" for the D-I level but didn't want to pass up the opportunity. "When you're recruited by D-I schools, people kind of expect you to go D- I," said Moberg, who left the Niagara team after the first seven games of his freshman year and now plays basketball at Division III Bethel. "If you're not all the way in, you're not going to make it," he said of the Division I athletic environment. The myth perpetuated Bill Maresh, father of two sons who received football scholarships -- Mike is a senior at North Dakota State and Sam had his career with the Gophers put on hold by heart surgery this summer -- said the biggest lesson his family learned was that questions must be asked. "We kind of learned as we went, and we tried to ask the right questions," he said. "Any question you have, you've got to be able to ask. 'What about books?' 'How's housing work out?' A lot of people are nervous about asking the questions." Lynn Otto, who visited Division I, II and III colleges with her three sons

5 from Hill-Murray -- two are now at Bethel and one goes to Stanford -- offered this warning: "The key is coaches. You never know. They talk a good talk." But some parents -- many who have paid tens of thousands of dollars for training sessions, camps, clinics, and teams that travel the country -- would rather believe a lie than accept a tougher truth. That's part of the reason scholarship myths still exist. In the late 1990s, when Dan O'Brien was the football coach at Concordia (St. Paul), it was an NAIA institution that did not award athletic scholarships. O'Brien, now Gophers director of football operations, had sent a few recruiting letters to players in Texas and one of them, from Houston, wanted to come to Concordia. But he and his parents also wanted a scholarship. What followed was an elaborate ruse. The player's parents paid for O'Brien to fly in for the signing-day ceremony. Before leaving for Houston, O'Brien went to the Concordia bookstore and purchased a cap that would rest on the table in front of the young man as he signed. But the fact remained that the Golden Bears did not offer scholarships, so O'Brien had no document for the player to sign. The solution? O'Brien asked the secretary in his football office to create an official-looking "letter of intent." And on signing day, the future Concordia player and his fellow collegebound classmates were celebrities. Parents, grandparents and other relatives were on hand, the local newspaper took photos and pride was abundant. Only a few people knew that one of the kids was signing a piece of paper that meant absolutely nothing. But everybody smiled Star Tribune. All rights reserved.