Cost of attendance inequity a big concern to MW coaches

LAS VEGAS – San Diego State’s Rocky Long and other Mountain West football coaches expressed concern Tuesday that the growing financial disparity between the haves and have-nots of college football will ruin their league.

Long, who has been in the league since it was formed in 1999, said he’s already lost recruits to other schools based on the new cost-of-attendance payments the NCAA is allowing for the first time this year. Nevada’s Brian Polian worries that the NCAA is making rules that benefit the few schools making big money on their programs at the expense of the majority of Football Bowl Subdivision members.

“When we start basing opinions and decisions and legislation off of what works best for the top 30 schools in the country, we’re creating a separation,” Polian said. “And it scares me.”

New NCAA legislation, pushed by the five power conferences, allows schools to award athletic scholarships based on the full cost of attendance, as determined by each institution’s financial-aid office. Previously, those scholarships only covered the cost of tuition, fees and the equivalent for students living off campus of the cost of housing and meals for those living on campus.

Long, speaking on the first day of the conference’s football media days at The Cosmopolitan, said he lost one recruit who lived two miles from his school’s campus to a private school in another community because it could pay him twice as much money per month -- $1,200 compared to $600 – to cover the cost of living.

“It’s disappointing to me, because it’s becoming dollars and cents,” said Long, San Diego State’s head coach for the past four years and coach at New Mexico from 1998-2008.

Eight of the 12 schools in the MW, including CSU, are giving their athletes the additional money to cover the cost of attendance this year. All cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy receive full scholarships, including a monthly paycheck. New Mexico and UNLV are phasing in the payments, providing them this year to football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball players only with other sports to be added next year. Nevada isn’t paying the stipends in any sport this year but plans to next year.

The payments range from $2,000 to as much as $5,400 a year at MW schools, the Idaho Statesman reported. CSU will pay $2,400 a year to in-state athletes and $3,100 to those from out of state, athletic director Joe Parker told the Coloradoan in May.

The cost of attendance “is the biggest issue in the Mountain West,” Polian said. Any MW school that decides not to pay the additional money for cost of attendance will “have no chance to compete,” he said.

“Not only can you not pluck a recruit away from a Power 5, you can’t compete in your own conference. You might as well be in the Big Sky.”

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