KeaneyBlue - The URI Basketball Forum

The news that stipends have been voted in, is bad news for all non-P5 schools that play basketball.

It's going to make it even tougher to compete against them for recruits.

URI in no way shape or form [imo] can afford to pay 2-4K a year to every student on an athletic scholarship. Especially with football.

It's only a matter of time, before the NCAA tourney belongs to the big boys only, and schools like URI will become like FCS in football, second class citizens.

rambone 78 wrote:The news that stipends have been voted in, is bad news for all non-P5 schools that play basketball.

It's going to make it even tougher to compete against them for recruits.

URI in no way shape or form [imo] can afford to pay 2-4K a year to every student on an athletic scholarship. Especially with football.

It's only a matter of time, before the NCAA tourney belongs to the big boys only, and schools like URI will become like FCS in football, second class citizens.

I think it's less of a concern for basketball than football, because the talent tends to be spread out much more in basketball, and because individual players can have a much bigger impact. However, I definitely agree with you that it's not a good thing for non-BCS programs, and it's a positive for those programs that do have more revenue. It's tough, because while it might not be the best for the overall competitive balance of the NCAA system, I do think it's an important concession to the individual athletes.

I feel strongly that players should get a stipend, but my preferred system would be that revenue-generating programs pay into a pool and the NCAA distributes that pool evenly among athletes. That would maintain some semblance of competitive balance and allow players to compensated in some measure for their efforts.

I am not a socialist, but sometimes I prefer socialist solutions. This is one of those times.

Yeah, you would think that the huge pool of money from NCAA Tournament could be used to pay for this kind of thing.

I believe I have heard that we'll have the money for this. It's not all doom and gloom.

I believe I heard that as well as long as it's not outrageous

If we do, great. At least the lower end [2K] anyway.

Hopefully it won't mean more cuts in programs though.

Why do people continue to think that eventually the NCAA tournament will be the power five conferences only? It's nonsensical and goes completely against every shred of evidence that exists. Sports leagues don't shrink schedules, they grow them. They don't have smaller playoffs, they add playoff spots. Anyone that sees a world where the tournament is only open to power 5 schools sees a world where the tournament has fewer games and brings in lower revenue. It's absolutely, positively not happening. Ever.

The men's NCAA basketball tournament is the biggest cash cow in sports because it is inclusive. There is no way in hell that at tourney consisting of just the Power 5 comes anywhere close to this in TV rights. There are huge chunks of the country that would be excluded. BTW, the stipends aren't that big of a deal. The Big East has already made this optional and PC has already approved the stipends for men's and woman's basketball and hockey.

i believe the A10 has agreed to pay stipends if it was imposed