How does the NCAA's new legislation impact Mississippi State baseball?
This past week, the NCAA Division I Council passed legislation that exempts from counting against team scholarship limits need-based financial aid given by the school that meets other specific criteria and other school-given, merit-based awards with no relationship to athletics ability.
In short, need-based and merit-based aid/awards can now be stacked with athletic scholarships without counting against each baseball team's 11.7-scholarship limit. At first glance, it seems like a new rule that might help Mississippi State. However upon further review, it doesn't appear so – at least not to any significant degree.
Kendall Rogers of D1Baseball reported on Wednesday that it appears the new rule will actually help private institutions more than public schools because private institutions generally have more need-based/merit-based financial aid programs. Multiple sources told Cowbell Corner this past week that MSU doesn't currently benefit significantly from need-based aid that it could stack with baseball scholarships.
Then, this past Friday in an interview on a Thunder & Lightning podcast extra, MSU athletic director (and former baseball head coach) John Cohen said this – explaining his thoughts on the new rule and college baseball's scholarship situation as a whole:
"How much does (the new legislation) affect Mississippi State? In my opinion, right now, not much. The need-based aid factor, quite frankly, is a game-changer in college baseball. And it probably could be a game-changer in many other equivalency sports. Here’s the dirty little secret of the equivalency sports, and I’ll go specifically to baseball. Nobody in Division I baseball has 11.7 scholarships. They either have more or they have less. There’s a large contingency of schools that do not fully fund baseball, so they’re beneath 11.7. But every institution has merit-based aid or need-based aid. The question is how much? There are many states around the Southeastern region of the country that offer tuition assistance from state government. And if you add that into the mix, again, schools are not operating at 11.7. I’ve said this many, many times. It’s kind of unfortunate, but if this were a football issue and somebody discovered in the sport of football that one school had more scholarship aid than another school? Oh my God. Could you imagine? There would be a war fought over this. But for whatever reason, with the equivalency sports – again I’m speaking mostly to baseball here – it just doesn’t seem to move a needle anywhere. In my opinion it is unfortunate. These coaches are out there working their tails off in the best league in America and throughout the country. They’re working their tails off to get kids to come to their institution and quite frankly, it becomes a scholarship issue. So the more scholarship aid you have to offer, quite frankly, the better your program is going to be. I’ll say this also. We have a beautiful facility. We have arguably the best facility of its kind in the entire country. We’re really proud of that. But as nice of a stadium as we have, if we are offering a kid a 25 percent or 40 percent scholarship, which is really common under the current guidelines, a kid and their parents, depending on their financial background, they might say, ‘Hey, this stadium is beautiful, but I can’t pay $30,000 a year to come play college baseball for you. Because this other place is allowing me to come for $10,000 or paying nothing.’ So again, the dirty little secret is kids and their parents are paying for the privilege of playing college baseball in the Southeastern Conference at most schools. At some schools, kids are getting huge scholarship aid and they are actually being, not necessarily paid, but rewarded because of the nature of their scholarship situation and at most of the institutions in the SEC, kids are actually paying for the privilege to pay baseball. That to me speaks even more to the caliber of the kids and the families that have to endure this in college baseball...It’s just a shame this is the way it has to be, but unfortunately, it’s the world we live in right now."
So in summary, Wednesday's ruling by the NCAA didn't hurt anything. And for some institutions, it helped. It's just that it doesn't appear right now that things changed all that much, if at all, for Mississippi State.
For more from Cohen on the aforementioned Thunder & Lightning interview, listen here as he discusses the baseball scholarship issue, the prospects for a football season this fall and more: