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The Daily OrangeYear in Sports | Nobody's business: Scholarship amounts
By Kyle Austin and Ethan Ramsey
Posted: 4/27/08, 10:47 PM EST Section: Sports
Ange Bradley carries the job title of "Head coach."
But that's not really an accurate description of her duties as head of Syracuse's field hockey program. "Small business owner" might be more appropriate.
She's not only in charge of each piece of her product, she hires all of her assistants and players, hands down any discipline, and, most of all, manages the money.
About half a million dollars worth. All to use on players' scholarships.
"If you think about it, you have employees on a payroll," said Bradley, who completed a 12-7 season in 2007, her first at SU. "So if you're working a job, what makes you dictate that somebody's going to get paid 'X' amount of dollars, somebody else is going to get paid a different salary or somebody's going to come to work for free?"
The system creates issues, and headaches, for head coaches: How much to offer a recruit. How much to raise a scholarship level. How to fill a roster when half a scholarship at Syracuse leaves more than $20,000 left to be paid, while half a scholarship at a public school might leave $10,000.
Of the 21 sports offered at Syracuse, only four - football, men's and women's basketball and tennis - offer full scholarships to every athlete on the team.
The rest are what's known as equivalency sports, which offer partial scholarships to most athletes. Every sport works at an NCAA-mandated scholarship maximum (12.6 for men's lacrosse, 14 for women's soccer, 20 for women's rowing, etc).
It's a system that can put players in tough spots. Many put in the same amount of time and effort, but do so for a different amount of scholarship money because each head coach allots funds at his or her discrepancy. Equivalency sport athletes are constantly competing with one another for money.
Syracuse spent $11.6 million of scholarship money on 589 athletes in 2006-07, according to the university's latest Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act report to the government. The money comes from both the athletic and academic side.
But that's not really an accurate description of her duties as head of Syracuse's field hockey program. "Small business owner" might be more appropriate.
She's not only in charge of each piece of her product, she hires all of her assistants and players, hands down any discipline, and, most of all, manages the money.
About half a million dollars worth. All to use on players' scholarships.
"If you think about it, you have employees on a payroll," said Bradley, who completed a 12-7 season in 2007, her first at SU. "So if you're working a job, what makes you dictate that somebody's going to get paid 'X' amount of dollars, somebody else is going to get paid a different salary or somebody's going to come to work for free?"
The system creates issues, and headaches, for head coaches: How much to offer a recruit. How much to raise a scholarship level. How to fill a roster when half a scholarship at Syracuse leaves more than $20,000 left to be paid, while half a scholarship at a public school might leave $10,000.
Of the 21 sports offered at Syracuse, only four - football, men's and women's basketball and tennis - offer full scholarships to every athlete on the team.
The rest are what's known as equivalency sports, which offer partial scholarships to most athletes. Every sport works at an NCAA-mandated scholarship maximum (12.6 for men's lacrosse, 14 for women's soccer, 20 for women's rowing, etc).
It's a system that can put players in tough spots. Many put in the same amount of time and effort, but do so for a different amount of scholarship money because each head coach allots funds at his or her discrepancy. Equivalency sport athletes are constantly competing with one another for money.
Syracuse spent $11.6 million of scholarship money on 589 athletes in 2006-07, according to the university's latest Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act report to the government. The money comes from both the athletic and academic side.
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