FAUQUIER FUSION: News: News article "how scholarships work"

THE RECRUITING process had become an excruciating ordeal. USC and New Mexico were offering the all-expenses-paid grand prize: full tuition, fees, books, room and board if only Kim Pickup would play soccer for them. But Pickup had always dreamed of attending Santa Clara, and Broncos Coach Jerry Smith was offering only tuition and books. ``I talked to my parents, and I said, `If money is a problem, let me know from the beginning so I don't start wanting this school and then you say sorry,' ' Pickup recalled. But Bedford Pickup, a sales manager for a national computer manufacturer in Chatsworth, could swing the extra cost in the family budget. So this weekend, Kim will conclude her college soccer career as a Broncos defender playing for the national championship at Spartan Stadium. The arcane rules of scholarships and the high-pressure recruiting process have made for "a stressful four years,' Bedford Pickup said, "but I guess that's what being a parent is all about.'

Not all college athletic scholarships are created equal to the full rides offered in football and men's and women's basketball, known as "head-count sports' in college athletics. Soccer and a host of other so-called minor sports are part of a stranger universe called ``equivalency sports,' where schools not only trump rivals' financial offers for athletes (don't call it bidding) but also where players' financial aid may go up or down each season (don't call them raises or pay cuts) and where teammates may be asked to chip in part of their scholarships to sign a hot new prospect (don't call that working the salary cap). If you do use those parenthetical expressions, the NCAA -- the guardian of amateurism in college sports -- is offended. "I don't think you'll find anybody in higher education who will suggest to you that a scholarship is pay-for-play,' NCAA spokesman Wally Renfro said. "This is not a salary that you are offering somebody. It is not pay. It is a reduction in the fees that it will cost you to go to school there.' Pay for performance, but to longtime critics of the collegiate-sports system, that's a distinction without a difference. "It's in instances like this that you really see the nakedness of the position that full rides sort of hide,' said Murray Sperber, a Cal graduate and former soccer writer for the Montreal Gazette who is an English professor at Indiana University and the author of three books on college sports. "The coach is essentially paying the athlete a certain amount and moving around the salaries based on athletic performance. It's never because they did great in class. The relationship is so clearly between compensation and athletic talent and productivity that we are really talking about professional sports.' Even those involved with the system acknowledge that, in equivalency sports, managing the complexities of financial aid is akin to the job of an NFL general manager.

"There's a whole lot of strategy,' Smith said. "Can we offer this, or can we get away with this? How many great players can we get with 12 scholarships? Do I want to spend my money on a player knowing I'm going to have her for four years when maybe I can get this other player next year?' In head-count sports -- in NCAA Division I, that's football and basketball for men and basketball, gymnastics, tennis and volleyball for women -- even $1 of athletic aid given to a player counts as a full scholarship toward the NCAA scholarship limit in that sport. There is little incentive for a school to give partial scholarships. Splitting the pie But in equivalency sports, the scholarship limit in a sport -- for example, 12 in women's soccer -- represents the total maximum aid allowable. The aid nearly always is spread among more than 12 players, but it's legal as long as the total value of the aid on the team doesn't exceed the value of 12 full rides. "It puts a lot of stress on the kids,' UCLA soccer coach Jillian Ellis said. "Bidding wars are part of our sport. It's not uncommon to say, "What did this school offer you?" and then we try to match that. I've seen kids make a decision based on $1,000.'

For parents, many of whom assume an athletic scholarship for soccer is just like one for basketball -- a free education -- equivalency sports are bewildering. Bedford Pickup said he told one recruiter who was low balling his daughter that "it's not the girl's fault your school is more expensive.' If parents can't afford to cover the difference between an offer and a school's costs, players have little choice but to choose the highest bid, a financially based decision that a football or basketball player almost never faces. That shifts the recruiting advantage to public schools. At private Santa Clara, where the freshman year costs $27,965, a tuition-andbooks deal leaves the player or her parents on the hook for $8,060. At rival North Carolina, where an out-of-state full ride is worth $17,091, a tuition-and-books offer to a California recruit leaves her family owing $5,997. "If you have no money, money becomes the deciding factor,' said Vicky Wagner, a 15-year coaching veteran of San Jose club soccer who had a player opt for Texas this year when her first choice, Santa Clara, couldn't come up with enough aid. "If the family has money, then they have options.'

In both head-count and equivalency sports, a player's aid is subject to annual renewal. But in equivalency sports, the better players commonly receive "raises.' Upping the offer after two years of receiving only tuition and books, Pickup got half her room and board covered for her junior season, an increase equal to about $3,800 at Santa Clara, and full room and board this season, another $3,800 increase. But raises may be difficult to grant when there is a high school star out there who could put a team in the final four. North Carolina Coach Anson Dorrance asked -- and received -- givebacks from some of his veteran players in 1996 because he lost no seniors from the '95 team and needed money to sign a freshman. "That seems like a legit request for the good of the team if you can deal with giving back a little money and it's not going to put you into bankruptcy,' said Santa Clara's Aly Wagner, Vicky's daughter, who as the nation's top-rated high school recruit in 1998 was among the minority of players who could command a full ride as a freshman.

Nevertheless, such choices are a part of the job many soccer coaches would rather do without, and reclassifying soccer as a head-count sport would solve the problem. "It's not fair to put a dollar figure on a player's head and try to determine who is worth more monetarily to you than someone else,' Brigham Young Coach Jennifer Rockwood said. "It's hard to bring in freshmen on more money than a starter is getting.' The NCAA's original classification was made in 1981, when it took over women's athletics, and was based on what were the most popular sports at the time, Renfro said. Only 22 of the 277 Division I schools that year offered women's soccer. Last season, 233 of the 312 Division I schools fielded teams, and in number of athletes, soccer ranks behind only indoor and outdoor track in popularity. Still, there is no pending NCAA legislation to reclassify soccer. That's probably because there is an assumption that doing so would require an increase in the sport's scholarship limit, said Lynda Tealer, Santa Clara's senior women's athletic administrator. Who gets the most? Dorrance, among other coaches, has devised an elaborate list of criteria to determine how much money he gives each player on the team. For example, a player on the U.S. national team or an All-American is entitled to a full ride. "I try to award scholarships based on things that are out of my control,' he said. "One of the problems coaches run into when selecting a more subjective standard like performance is that one of worst things you can do to a young athlete, who cherishes your opinion, is not to give scholarship money when you don't think her performance is good enough.' Pickup said she left the negotiations on her raises to her father (don't call him an agent) because "I don't want it to affect my relationship with my coach, and I don't want to be a bitter person.' Her father has no complaints about the way the four years worked out. "I thought Jerry made a fair offer as to what he could reasonably do. He told us what he would attempt to do about raises if he could, but he made no promises. To me, it's worth the money to have this team, such a wonderful group of girls.'