Third installment in a periodic series examining whether the rules and practices of college sports treat athletes fairly. Today's installment focuses on the NCAA's one-year scholarships.

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Grayson Mullins grew up a few miles from the University of South Carolina campus, but dreamed of playing at Notre Dame. So when former Fighting Irish and then Gamecocks coach Lou Holtz offered him a scholarship, Mullins thought he had found Nirvana.

"I grew up a Notre Dame and Lou Holtz fan," Mullins said. "So when Lou Holtz calls you up to go to Carolina, you go."

As a redshirting freshman in 2004, he found a spot as a scout-team quarterback. But a few months later, Holtz was replaced by Steve Spurrier.

Mullins was moved to wide receiver, and during his first spring under Spurrier was listed on the depth chart. That summer, however, Mullins received a call from Spurrier, who said his scholarship had been rescinded.

According to media reports at the time, Spurrier didn't believe some of Holtz' players were SEC caliber. The news came as a shock to Mullins.

"I understand we were signed to play Lou Holtz' offense, and we didn't necessarily fit Spurrier's offense," said Mullins, who paid his own way for a semester before transferring to Division I-AA Presbyterian College in South Carolina. "Still, you don't think of that when you sign a scholarship -- that you're signing a one-year deal. You think they're committed to you. It's not fair. Yet it happens all the time. I never got in any trouble. I didn't do anything to get run off."

NCAA athletic scholarships last for one year.

COLLEGE ATHLETES' RIGHTS

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Installment No. 1

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Installment No. 2

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There is growing consideration of creating multi-year scholarships intended to protect athletes, who make a four-year commitment to a school when they sign a national letter of intent, from losing their scholarship and their preferred athletic and educational opportunity before four years is over.

At SEC Media Days in Birmingham in July, commissioner Mike Slive included that idea among several proposed reforms.

"I think we need to take a look at it," ACC Commissioner John Swofford said at his league's media days. "Maybe it's a two-year grant with a two-year renewal. Maybe it's a four-year grant. There are pros and cons either way. But I think we need to discuss it."

Colorado State assistant director of compliance John Infante said Slive's proposal could go even further: Allow schools to determine how long a scholarship will last when the athlete signs.

"By doing so, recruiting would be revolutionized," Infante wrote in article on the NCAA's website.

That's because schools would be effectively bidding on players -- legally. Schools could entice recruits with scholarships of varying durations -- from a one-year renewable deal as is the case now to a four-year, no-cut package, presumbably for blue-chippers.

Infante declined to be interviewed further about his idea.

Marcus Bailey, the executive director of Reform The NCAA, an athletes advocacy group in Atlanta, has advocated using multi-year scholarships for years. While he commends Slive and others for putting forth the idea, he's not convinced NCAA presidents will ever follow through.

He believes they know that their coaches will never want to give up the flexibility to clear space on their roster for new players who are more talented.

Numbers game

At its spring meetings in Destin, the SEC voted to end the practice of oversigning high school football players, limiting its schools to the NCAA maximum of 25 annual new scholarships.

But Bailey and others say that's not the heart of the issue. Despite the hubbub surrounding oversigning, the real issue remains roster management.

In football, the NCAA allows 25 initial football scholarships in Division I-A, but it allows only 85 football players on scholarship at any one time. Division I-AA allows 63 scholarships, which can be spread over 85 players, and allows signing of 30 players a season. In Division II, the limit is 36 scholarships, which can be used for up to 85 players. The Division II signing limit is 25 initial scholarships a year.

Those numbers at each level mean a school can sign more new players than it is allowed to enroll on scholarship, depending on how many scholarship players from the previous year departed due to graduation, disciplinary dismissal, voluntary transfer, turning pro early or other reasons. That means some veteran players who haven't blossomed athletically might not get their one-year scholarships renewed.

"The real issue isn't how many you sign, but how many you can enroll," ESPN football recruiting analyst Tom Luginbill said.

According to Oversigning.com, a website dedicated to tracking roster management issues, SEC schools held the top four spots for signing more football players than they could get in school in 2011. Ole Miss led the way, followed by Alabama, LSU and Arkansas.

Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt said that despite the number of new players he signs, he has never pulled a scholarship from a veteran player. "If we miss on one, we miss. You just hope you can improve him and can make him the best player he can be."

The Big Ten has a signing policy different from the SEC and other major conferences.

If a Big Ten team loses 16 seniors, for instance, it can sign only that number plus three. The additional three is intended to offset normal attrition among non-seniors.

"It's as simple as the notion that you don't offer what you don't have to give," said Chad Hawley, the Big Ten's assistant commissioner for compliance. "The consequences are pretty easy to see."

The Big Ten realizes its policy puts the league at a competitive disadvantage, Hawley said.

Gerry DiNardo, who coached in the SEC at Vanderbilt and LSU and in the Big Ten at Indiana, agrees.

"One of the first things I said when I got to the Big Ten is 'you're crazy for not oversigning.'"

DiNardo proposed legislation to allow oversigning in the Big Ten, but it was voted down 6-5. His own faculty representative voted against the proposal.

Luginbill believes a policy similar to the Big Ten's would not be welcomed by coaches in the SEC and other major conferences.

"That will drive coaches nuts," he said, "because they can't manipulate the roster."

Roster management

Under legislation passed in 1973, schools can award only one-year, renewable scholarships. The legislation was adopted because of financial concerns. Studies at the time showed a high percentage of athletes quit their sport but stayed in college with irrevocable scholarships.

One-year scholarships were the rule when Spurrier joined the ranks of football head coaches at Duke and they remain the rule today.

He has taken scholarships away from veteran players in the past, such as Mullins. Spurrier doesn't think the practice needs defending.

"Scholarships are one-year renewals. Sometimes we don't renew them all."

Spurrier cited a track star who lost a football grant. That player, Bryce Sherman, averaged 5.0 yards a carry and caught one pass in a limited role last season. He opted not to return as a walk-on. He didn't lose his college degree because he had already graduated by then.

"We gave him a year and a half, which I thought was pretty nice," Spurrier said.

Look around most major-college football programs, especially in the summer months, and players are leaving for various reasons, freeing up scholarships.

The problem, according to critics, is that coaches run some players off to make room for the next one simply because of lack of talent, not because of any failing in academics or behavior. In some cases -- infrequent ones -- it's done by not renewing the scholarship. In other cases, it's less direct -- a coach telling a player he won't see much action and encouraging him to transfer to get more playing time elsewhere. Running off players occurs most frequently when a new coach is hired.

"With the one-year scholarship, they have the right to terminate without cause," said Bailey, the head of Reform the NCAA. "And the real cause is the player is not as good as they thought he was."

The pulling of scholarships is hard to document, said Ramogi Huma, president of the California-based National College Players Association, another athletes advocacy group.

His group determined that 22 percent of eligible Division I basketball players did not return after the 2008 season, but he said it could not determine the reason each athlete did not return.

"It is tough, because it happens behind closed doors and a lot of coaches 'help' players transfer to smaller schools. And for the players, there's still a stigma to being labeled not good enough," Huma said.

When Terry Bowden was the head football coach at Auburn University, he never took a scholarship away from a player strictly because of disappointing athletic performance, he said. With 85 scholarships allowed to Division I-A programs, he had enough others players that he believed he didn't need to do that.

But he's now the head coach at the University of North Alabama, a Division II school allowed by the NCAA to have 36 scholarships. He can't be so patient with players who aren't living up to their athletic promise when they were recruited and signed.

"I've had kids coming in to my office crying because I've told them I'm not renewing their scholarship," Bowden said. "I have to make decisions here I never had to make at Auburn."

Taking a scholarship away is tough, Bowden said.

"You can't take your conscience out of it or your morality out of it," he said. "I try to make the decision and then see how they (the players) react. If it's a hardship for the player, I'll usually change my mind."

Reform ideas

Bailey advocates offering recruits a choice of two scholarships. The first would be a full, five-year, no-cut ride with players allowed to leave under current transfer rules. Schools would have an out clause for players who get into legal trouble or can't meet academic standards. The second choice would be a one-year deal. The caveat: The player could transfer to another school at the end of the year without sitting out a season as required by current rules for transfers within the same NCAA division.

Bailey thinks it's reprehensible that the NCAA does not allow players to transfer wherever they wish and without sitting out a year, considering that schools guarantee financial aid only one year at a time.

"Where else in America could the boss -- in other words, the head coach -- terminate the employee yet still make him get permission as to where he will go work next?" Bailey said.

Football coaches have reservations about the SEC's proposal for multiple-year scholarships.

Virginia Tech's Frank Beamer said his concern is that a long-term scholarship would take away the incentive to perform for some athletes. "I don't think multi-year scholarships are good at all," Beamer said. "The system works fine the way it is now. If a kid knows he has a scholarship for how many years, some -- not all -- could (not) care less."

Georgia Tech's Paul Johnson said there would have to be provisions for the removal of a multi-year scholarship if a student-athlete got in trouble off the field or failed to keep up in the classroom.

Florida State's Jimbo Fisher agreed, but added he doesn't believe players have to live in fear of being run off under the current system in the first place.

If a change is made toward multi-year scholarships, both Johnson and Fisher believe the move should be across the board and that individual schools shouldn't be allowed to offer grants of varying lengths.

Hawley, the Big Ten associate commissioner, said the idea of multi-year scholarships originated with a task force led by Penn State president Graham Spanier. If multi-year scholarships become the norm, Hawley said, more restrictions on oversigning would become essential and the Big Ten model would make more sense for other leagues to follow.

Luginbill, the ESPN recruiting analyst, believes that in the future college recruiters could use different scholarship policies as enticements.

For example, he said, if the SEC continues to sign the maximum of 25 players while the Big Ten limits signings to only three above the number of departing players, Big Ten schools could sell the fact that they are less likely to later cut a player.

"I don't think there's any question that could be used against the SEC (and other leagues with similar policies)," Luginbill said.

At the very least, recruits ought to know a school's policy on reasons why they could lose their scholarship, says the NCPA. California and Connecticut have recently passed NCPA-sponsored laws that require such disclosure to prospects.

The NCAA will hold a presidential advisory board meeting Wednesday to discuss scholarship proposals. Huma of the NCPA believes the reform is being pushed because of legal problems, citing a recent lawsuit and Department of Justice queries about the length of scholarships.

The lawsuit,

, was brought by former Rice football player Joseph Agnew, who had his scholarship pulled before his junior year in the wake of an injury and a coaching change. Agnew's argument is that his future career outside of football was injured because his family had to start paying for his tuition, books and board at the expensive private school even though he signed a binding letter-of-intent. Agnew stayed at Rice for one more semester but left before getting his degree.

The case was dismissed last month when Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson of the Southern District of Indiana ruled that a college degree, which attorneys argued was an opportunity denied to Agnew when his athletics scholarship was pulled, would not have been an automatic result even if Agnew had remained at Rice.

Agnew lawyer Rob Carey, who said Agnew had multiple scholarship offers as a recruit, likes the idea of varying scholarship types.

"If schools had to compete to sign him coming out of high school," Carey told ESPN in 2010, "he would have had a four-year scholarship."

Meanwhile, the Justice Department began asking questions in June about whether the NCAA's one-year scholarship policy violates antitrust laws. There has been no further public discussion of the issue by the Justice Department.

NCAA presidents will discuss Slive's reform agenda at the 2012 convention. Mullins, the quarterback who lost his scholarship at South Carolina, would like to see some change.

He has regrets, but isn't bitter. He got to start at quarterback for two years at Presbyterian, and years later he returned to the University of South Carolina to finish his degree.

"You don't know what you're getting into because they don't tell you everything up front," he said. "... If the coach loses his job, he gets a buyout. If we lose our job, we lose our scholarship. If they commit you to a school, why can't they commit to you for four years? Or if they don't want you, why can't they pay your way for at least another year? After all, aren't you really there for an education?"

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