Bill Kostroun/Associated Press

When the NCAA granted the five biggest conferences in college sports autonomy, allowing those conferences to individually decide if they would grant student athletes a cost of living allowance, the question was raised how the conferences would handle that freedom and if individual schools would vary in the amount of money granted.

In the Big Ten, at least, the schools won't be held to a fixed number. And Penn State is taking advantage of that fact, offering a very sizable stipend to its student athletes.

David Jones of PennLive.com has more:

Based on cost-of-attendance figures cited by CollegeData.com for the 2014-15 academic calendar, Penn State ranks at the top of the Big Ten with a miscellaneous expenses figure of $4,788. If it stays the same next school year, that means $4,788 of walking-around money during the nine-month period for athletes who receive full grants in aid.

Without question, Penn State is using this stipend as a recruiting tool, which purists of college athletics probably feared as soon as the movement to pay college athletes started to pick up steam. Granted, even the Big Ten's biggest stipend at $4,788 for a nine-month period of the year is extremely modest, but it will now be interesting to see if schools around the Big Ten decide to increase their own stipend to compete with the one Penn State is offering.

Big Ten associate commissioner for compliance, Chad Hawley, discussed that disparity with Jones:

Going into this, we're acknowledging that there is a disparity from one place to another. And we would be naïve to say that, at some point, it's not going to make its way into the recruiting conversation. But where we are policy-wise is less concerned about legislating a mythical level playing field and more concerned that student-athletes just have what they need to go to the institution that they choose. I don't foresee us getting to a point where we're standardizing [the stipend] figure from one school to the next.

For now, the stipend remains the compromise between the proponents for keeping the amateur status of college athletics and those who feel college athletes should be paid for the service they provide. But if these stipends indeed become a major recruiting tool, the stipends will likely continue to rise as schools look to get an upper hand over their competitors.

If Big Ten schools begin to increase their stipends based on what Penn State has offered, that process has already begun.