The Scholarship Divide
Recruits Clamor for More From Coaches With Less
By
BILL PENNINGTON
March 11, 2008
The country's celebrity college football and basketball coaches lead nationally ranked teams on television, controlling a bevy of full scholarships and a sophisticated marketing machine that swathes college athletics with an air of affluence. They are far from typical.
More common is the soccer, lacrosse or softball coach who sits in a closet-sized office beside a $100 air conditioner and a 12-inch TV, trying to figure out ways to buy the best athlete possible for the least amount of scholarship money, which can be as little as $400. A jack-of-all-trades, this coach has a job that requires the skills of a stock portfolio manager, labor lawyer, headhunter, family counselor and soothsayer.
"There have been days when you feel like a used-car salesman," said Joe Godri, the baseball coach at
Villanova University. "I've always been completely honest, but you can't get away from the fact that the process can be crazy. You pump up a kid so much to come to your place, and when he agrees, you say, 'O.K., and what I've got for you is 25 percent of your cost to attend here."
"And no one believes you, but that's a good Division I baseball scholarship. You have to convince his parents that you're being really fair."
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Other coaches said athletes or their parents tried to be too wily in their scholarship negotiations.
"Families will try to play the coaches off each other," said Kim Ciarrocca, who coaches women's lacrosse at Delaware. "They'll say that they've got a half or full scholarship offer from some school and want us to match it. What they don't know is that we coaches all talk to each other, and we know the truth."
She added: "We will call the other coach and ask, 'Hey, did you offer that kid a full ride?' When the answer is no, that kid might have lost the interest of two coaches."
Godri said parents sometimes are misled by advisers who use the high-profile sports of football or basketball as a model for how to play the recruiting game. That is a mistake, Godri said, because the money in the nonrevenue sports is limited.
"The first thing people have to understand is that they are probably not going to recoup the money they've already spent on their kid's athletic career," Godri said. "But that's what they are told. People get exploited. I wish people would relax and talk frankly to coaches. I'd tell them to lower their expectations, and everything will probably work out fine for all concerned."
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"But people tend to just focus on the money. They chase the scholarship and I've had several families come back to me a year or two later and say, 'Chasing the money was a mistake.' It sounds like a cliche, but there's a lot more to being a happy college athlete than how much money you get. The money alone won't make you happy."
