Re: NCAA approves "Pay for Play" plan: Will this hurt womens hockey?
The concerns expressed thus far are legitimate, but I have a different take. IMHO, the plan gives those who honestly want to play by the rules an avenue to do so.
$2,000 per year is a reasonable amount of spending money for a student. Obviously students from middle class backgrounds and above can get that money from their parents. But if they're producing milliions of dollars of revenue for their schools, should they have to? And of course the real issue is students from poor backgrounds, who may not have an "above board" source of such funds.
In either case, the lack of spending money makes the athletes vulnerable to small temptations. Reputations and seasons are badly damaged over tattoos
or few bills folded up inside a baseball cap.
I'll grant immediately that the plan does absolutely nothing to deter the family that demands 100k for Quarterbacking services. That said, I truly think that the kid who's just a few hundred bucks short of a normal student budget might stay out of trouble if they have the pocket money.
Personal experience from long ago may be coloring my view. As a Masters student, I went through school on an Assistantship. Working as a TA/RA, I made just enough $$ to cover tuition, books, on-campus housing, board plan and have a precious bit of spending money. Getting my monthly statement from the University was pretty amusing. Line 1 was my pay, then the deductions generally brought the balance down to almost zero.
Still, it felt good to be breaking even. It would have felt pretty bad to take out a small loan to cover the occasional pizza or sweatshirt. For this reason, I've long been sympathetic to the idea that scholarships should include a small amount of spending money.
I haven't seen the exact text of the proposal, but I presume that the extra funds would have to comply with Title IX requirements. Otherwise, I believe each school would be free to spend or not spend as they deem fit. I presume that the large majority of the $$ would go to sports where the revenue, the student need and the temptations are greatest -- meaning football and hoops. It is conceivable to me that Men's Hockey at some schools would be included. If so, that might mean that Women's Hockey at those schools might catch a break and be along for the ride. So in that limited sense, the proposal might actually help Women's Hockey.
It's not a perfect plan. Will it increase the gap between the haves and havenots, including in Women's Hockey? Quite possibly so; and if so, that's a problem. But if it can cut down on the number of "minor" rules violations, maybe it's worth it.
Please understand I'm not excusing rulebreakers. Whatever the rules are, violators must accept the consequences. But so many innocent people are hurt when NCAA rules are broken. For major violations, that injury is a necessary evil, period. And I'm not naive; I understand that violations both large and small will continue to occur. But if a good chunk of the small stuff can be nipped in the bud, everyone benefits.
