College athletes cashing in with millions in new benefits

Show Caption Hide Caption College athletes cashing in with millions in new benefits College athletes cashing in with millions in new benefits.

Two recent changes in NCAA rules are resulting in major-college athletes receiving nearly $160 million a year in additional benefits, a USA TODAY Sports analysis has found.

That figure is certain to rise as more schools implement — or increase their distribution of — athletic scholarships that can cover not only the traditional tuition, room, board, books and fees but also incidental costs of attending college such as transportation and personal expenses.

The enhanced scholarships took effect Aug. 1, following a vote at January's NCAA convention by school and athlete representatives from the nation's five wealthiest conferences that allowed, but did not require, all Division I schools to cover athletes' cost of attendance. In April 2014, the Division I Board of Directors voted to allow schools to provide scholarship and non-scholarship athletes with unlimited meals and snacks.

The changes came against a backdrop of antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA, criticism from several members of Congress about the treatment of athletes, drastic increases in television rights revenues for the elite conferences and skyrocketing spending on facilities and on salaries for prominent coaches, athletics directors, conference commissioners and NCAA executives.

"I do think it'd be naïve to say that the lawsuits didn't accelerate things, but there was a lot of discussion about needing to do this before some of the lawsuits came about," Kansas State president and NCAA Board of Governors chair Kirk Schulz told USA TODAY Sports. Schools among the five elite conferences "were saying, 'Look we can afford to do it. We just need the ability (under the NCAA rules) to do it.' "

Schulz added that "there was a little bit of trust involved" in making the changes. Using the introduction of unlimited meals and snacks as an example, he said schools had to ignore worries that "if we let everybody do that, maybe somebody's going fly lobsters from Maine every evening for their football team. At some point, you've got to say, 'If people are going to do that, they're going to do that and let's not worry about it.' "

But worries are being raised. Within the broader higher-education community, there is concern about pressure being put on financial aid officers, whose decisions about schools' cost-of-attendance figures can impact student debt levels. The increased spending on scholarships and food, atop all the other rising expenses, is creating worry among coaches in so-called non-revenue sports that their teams may be endangered.

Referencing conversations at the Division I Strategic Summit and board meetings two weeks ago in Indianapolis, Schulz said "there is certainly some active discussion among some of the (school) presidents" about Division I membership requirements. At present, among other things, schools must have teams in 14 sports to be in Division I, 16 to be in the FBS.

"I think there needs to be some dialogue about what does it mean to be a Division I member," Schulz said. With many schools viewing continued access to the Division I men's basketball tournament as critical, he added, "there may be some ways to say we're still going to want to have people sponsor a certain number of sports at what we're going to call a Division I level. They may be funded differently."

USA TODAY Sports based its estimate of additional spending for athletes on budget figures it obtained from athletics departments at more than 100 of the 128 Football Bowl Subdivision schools, interviews with officials at three-fourths of the multi-sport conferences outside the FBS, several single-sport conferences and two Division III schools that field Division I teams in at least one sport.

(For complete methodology, see bottom of page.)

Among public schools, which constitute about two-thirds of Division I's nearly 350 member institutions, the estimated additional spending for 2015-16 is an amount equal to about 2% of their combined athletic operating expenses for 2013-14, the most recent year for which those figures are available.

CASH FLOWING

Athletes have talked about an array of possible uses for the incidentals money.

Last week, when South Carolina football players received their first monthly allocation of $400, freshman wide receiver Jalen Christian was asked what he planned to do with it. "I don't know yet," he said. "Save it up? I'm an Xbox guy and there are new games coming out in October and November. But, other than that, I'm going to save it."

Schools in the Power Five conferences — Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific-12 and Southeastern — and some other schools, are covering the cost of attendance for athletes in all of their sports.

FBS schools not in the Power Five are working under a wide range of plans for their athletes. Most, though not all, have increased their spending on meals and snacks. With cost of attendance, some are fully covering a few teams and partially covering the remainder. Some are partially covering all teams. Others reported that they will not begin providing any cost-of-attendance assistance until the 2016-17 school year.

Non-FBS schools implementing cost-of-attendance plans primarily are focusing on men's and women's basketball. However, Liberty, which has an FCS football team, and Wichita State are providing it in all sports. Virginia Commonwealth has started a two-year phase-in to do the same.

Atlantic 10 commissioner Bernadette McGlade said all of the schools in her conference, which includes VCU, have increased spending on meals and snacks and that after having "anxiety about the impact and the cost, we really have had no concerns raised about it at all."

But with cost of attendance, which A-10 schools voted to mandate in men's and women's basketball beginning this year, she said: "Institutions are going to really have to work hard to address where those dollars come from, and I think they're going to have to look really hard at philanthropy because it's going to be a dangerous road if you just keep increasing the general student body athletic fee."

The athletics department at San Diego State, a Mountain West Conference school, is receiving additional funding from the university (about $550,000 last year and $250,000 to $300,000 this year), and is raising men's basketball ticket prices and the booster club donations required for prime seating locations and other benefits, said senior associate athletic director of business administration Chuck Lang. Conference USA has created a $6.3 million pool from which each of its 14 schools will be able to draw a total $450,000 at any time over the next three years, spokeswoman Courtney Morrison Archer said.

Florida State evaluated its contractual obligations for 2015-16 — including football coach Jimbo Fisher's new annual compensation of more than $5 million — and its estimates for cost of attendance and food, then implemented a 2% cut in expenses in all other areas. That's allowing to absorb $2 million in additional scholarship costs — $4,500 per full in-state scholarship and $6,000 per full out-of-state award — plus $400,000 for additional meals and snacks. Now, the athletics department and its booster club are evaluating whether to increase the donations that would be required for various benefits, a program that hasn't been adjusted since 2006.

"Any time we make changes to NCAA legislation that has a financial impact … it's always been somewhat challenging for schools to figure out," FSU athletics director Stan Wilcox said. "So I see this as somewhat similar. I think that we're all kind of figuring out how to make it work, and at the end of the day there's going to be another challenge that's going to come facing us and we're all going to figure out how to make that work, as well."

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TRANSPARENCY IN THE SEC

SEC schools are additionally working through a set of reporting requirements designed to bring transparency to their cost-of-attendance calculations. At the NCAA convention in January, the SEC proposed that these rules apply to all NCAA schools, but it was voted down. In May, the conference's schools adopted them anyway.

They begin from the principle that cost of attendance for all students is supposed to be based on budgets determined under federal guidelines by financial aid office staffers, who also have the authority to use what the U.S. Department of Education terms "professional judgment" to provide upward variances on a case-by-case basis.

By July 15 each year, SEC schools must provide the conference office with their cost-of-attendance figures and methodology, as well as certification from their campus CEO and senior financial aid officer that both have reviewed and approved the report.

Then, at the end of each term, they have to submit information to the SEC about each student who has been granted an individual increase in their cost-of-attendance budget based on "professional judgment."

Justin Draeger, the president and CEO of National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said he is "disappointed that has not been adopted among all the institutions. Transparency is integral to this going forward."

Draeger said he doesn't have any evidence of an athletics department manipulating cost-of-attendance numbers or pressuring a financial aid office to do the same.

What he does have is "an enormous amount of newly found interest in how schools come up with their cost of attendance," he said, "and it's not just coming from the athletic department. It's coming from the board or trustees or the president's office in relation to how their cost of attendance compares to (those of) other schools within their conference.

"So I think it's too soon to tell whether pressure ultimately will be brought to bear."

Contributing: Jodi Upton; Willie T. Smith, Greenville (S.C.) News; Jim Henry, Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat

METHODOLOGY

To determine an estimate of the amount of money Division I athletics programs are spending annually on recently approved benefits for athletes, USA TODAY Sports requested a variety of data from schools and gathered reporting from other Gannett properties. It asked schools for the amounts they are using for 2015-16 as the differential between the value of a traditional athletic scholarship and the full cost of attending school, including incidental costs like transportation and miscellaneous living expenses that schools could offer to cover, beginning Aug. 1. It also asked for the total amounts of money athletics departments are budgeting to cover the cost-of-attendance differentials being given to athletes and to pay for additional meals and snacks allowed under an NCAA rules change in April 2014 that lifted all limits of the provision of these items to scholarship and non-scholarship athletes.

Public schools in the Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific-12 and Southeastern conferences, and some other schools, are implementing cost-of-attendance awards for athletes in all of their sports. Athletes on full scholarships generally are having their full cost of attendance covered; athletes on partial scholarships generally are getting proportionate amounts of their incidental costs covered.

In addition, while some schools provided one amount as the cost-of-attendance differential, some reported having as many as four amounts depending on whether an athlete is in-state or out-of-state and whether the athlete is living on campus or off. Others schools reported having ranges of possible amounts.

Amounts that schools reported in relation to the provision of unlimited meals and snacks may include costs associated with new food-service facilities, as well as with service and nutritional staff.

Private schools, which are not subject to open-records laws, mainly provided portions of the information requested, which were then used to create an estimate. Several declined to provide any.