Cost-of-attendance allowances for ACC athletes vary widely - Daily Press
Cost-of-attendance allowances for ACC athletes vary widely
By David Teel Aug 24, 2015
With eight public schools, six private and one hybrid, the ACC is college sports’ most diverse power conference. Those 15 members have taken similarly varied approaches to cost-of-attendance scholarships, a benefit available to athletes for the first time this year.
Admissions officials at Virginia, Virginia Tech and Florida State have calculated separate allowances for in-state and out-of-state athletes. Boston College, Duke and Notre Dame base individual rates, in large measure, on the distance from their homes to campus.
Virginia and Pittsburgh – the latter is an unusual public-private combination -- have larger allowances for athletes enrolled in graduate school, to compensate for additional expenses associated with older students who live off-campus. Clemson, Georgia Tech, Louisville, North Carolina State and Wake Forest award the same amount to every full scholarship athlete.
Boston College, Duke, Notre Dame and N.C. State disburse cost-of-attendance money once a semester, Virginia once a month, Clemson in 10 equal installments. Virginia Tech is twice a semester for on-campus athletes, three times a semester for off-campus residents.
North Carolina, which is calculating each athlete’s allowance individually, has yet to finalize its amounts.
Citing private-school status, Miami and Syracuse declined to reveal anything about their COA approach. Fellow privates Boston College, Duke, Notre Dame and Wake Forest were as transparent as Miami and Syracuse were secretive.
(The ACC’s six private institutions are as many as the other four equity conferences combined. The Big 12 has Baylor and Texas Christian, the Big Ten Northwestern, the Pacific 12 Stanford and Southern California, the Southeastern Vanderbilt.)
As these eight pages of federal guidelines show, the contrasting amounts being distributed by schools in the ACC, and by those in the other power conferences, are not a surprise. The rules are open to interpretation, giving institutions wide leeway in implementation.
Naturally, this frustrates coaches. They obsess over recruiting advantages, real and imagined, and crave the unattainable: a level playing field.
“The intent is good,” Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney said, “but for one school to be able to pay $3,000 or $4,000 more than another school, then at the end of the day, guys are going to make decisions for the wrong reasons, and it shouldn’t be that way. … It’s going to be a factor in the recruiting process, there’s no question.”
I’ll believe that when an alarming number of top prospects flock to the schools offering the largest cost-of-attendance allowances. More likely is that athletes will select colleges the way they always have, influenced by coaching staffs, facilities, location and history of success.
Approved by the NCAA in January, COA allowances have long been part of academic scholarships and are designed to cover secondary expenses such as travel home and social activities. And coaches’ objections notwithstanding, those expenses vary by institution.
In the ACC, standard cost-of-attendance allowances range from $6,000 for out-of-state athletes at Florida State to $1,250, plus an individualized travel stipend, for all athletes at Boston College.
“I understand the concerns,” ACC commissioner John Swofford said, “and I think any time you take a step like we have taken, you’re going to have some discomfort. And I think we’re going to need to live with this for a couple of years before we truly see whether those differences impact the decisions that recruits are making. In a perfect world, would that number be the same? Probably, but we don’t live in a perfect world … and from a legal standpoint, that cannot exist at the moment.
“Sometimes you need to do the right thing, even though you know it has a few warts, and I think this is the right thing to do. I think we have taken the right step that is entirely appropriate and I think we took it with eyes open, understanding that it wasn’t perfect.”
Indeed, newly flush with legislative autonomy and long flush with annual television windfalls, the 65 schools in the power conferences needed to enhance benefits for athletes. And cost-of-attendance scholarships are meaningful and fair and acknowledge the incalculable value of a free education, unlike the free-for-all, open market advocated by ESPN’s Jay Bilas and renowned attorney Jeffrey Kessler.
Here is a school-by-school summary of how ACC members are handling COA grants for athletes. The information was obtained from each athletic department.
Amounts cited are the total for the 2015-16 academic year and for full-scholarship athletes. Those on partial grants receive partial allowances – half the amount for a half scholarship, for example.
Boston College: $1,250, plus a travel allowance based on hometown, divided into once-a-semester payments.
Clemson: $3,906 in 10 installments.
Duke: Amounts range from $2,800 to $3,500 and are calculated individually, with the most significant difference being a travel component based distance from campus. Once-a-semester disbursements.
Florida State: $4,500 for in-state residents, $6,000 out-of-state. The school has yet to determine the frequency of disbursements.
Georgia Tech: $2,000 divided into once-a-semester payments.
Louisville: $5,364 with multiple disbursements each semester.
Miami: The athletic department declined to reveal its allowance. Miami’s website estimates a 2015-16 undergraduate’s personal expenses at $2,100, plus average travel costs of $680. The NCAA legislation does not obligate schools to provide athletes the full cost of attendance but prohibits schools from exceeding that amount.
North Carolina: “Every student’s number is different based on a variety of factors,” spokesman Steve Kirschner said, “financial need, health insurance, in-state vs. out-of-state and whether they live on-campus or if they are off-campus) We are still determining our numbers and are not definite when we will have them finalized.” The university’s website estimates $1,448 in personal expenses for each undergraduate, plus $862 in travel for in-state residents, $1,820 for out-of-state.
North Carolina State: $2,706, split into once-a-semester payments.
Notre Dame: The average is $1,950, with amounts varying based on family residence. Once-a-semester disbursements.
Pittsburgh: $3,296 for undergraduates, $5,922 for graduates, divided into twice-a-semester payments.
Syracuse: The athletic department did not share its allowance. The university’s website estimates annual personal expenses of $990, plus $642 for transportation.
Virginia: $3,180 for in-state undergraduates, $3,600-$4,600 for out-of-state undergraduates, depending on distance from campus. Graduate student-athletes receive approximately $3,000 more. Monthly disbursements.
Virginia Tech: $3,280 in-state, $3,620 out-of-state. Paid twice a semester for on-campus students, three times a semester for off-campus.
Wake Forest: $3,062 divided into monthly payments.
For those interested in numbers nationally, here's a chart compiled by CBSSports.com's Jon Solomon.