A deep dive on athletic scholarships
Investing in recruiting is more like investing in venture than it is the S&P 500.
Most people are going to spend a lot of money and get little to nothing on the backend.
However, some people are going to win big time and get a 50x return.
Today, I want to talk about athletic scholarships in each sport (and if they’re even worth your time).
What is the monetary value of a scholarship?
The value of a scholarship is going to vary significantly with both the tuition of the school and the percent of scholarship being offered.
- Average for D1 sports is about $14,500 per year ($58,000 over 4 years).
- Average for D2 sports is about $6,000 per year ($24,000 over 4 years).
Some will be much higher. Stanford’s annual cost may be as high as $80k per year, so 4 years of a full scholarship there would be a $320,000 value.
Some will be much lower. Some coaches will offer kids $200, just so they can sign a National Letter of Intent and tell people they got an offer.
Full vs Partial Scholarship
Yes, it’s true. Some of those people you see posting their offers on Twitter are being compensated with less than they’ll pay for a couple books in their first semester.
The NCAA (or similar leagues) dictate how many total scholarships each team can give out, based on their sport and division.
From there, sports are divided into 2 categories: Headcount and Equivalency.
- Headcount sport means that every single athlete on the roster is either on a full athletic scholarship or is not on any athletic scholarship.
- Equivalency sport means that the total amount of scholarships can be split up into a bunch of smaller scholarships however the team decides is appropriate.
Headcount sports are D1-FBS football, D1 men’s and women’s basketball, D1 women’s volleyball, D1 women’s tennis, and D1 women’s gymnastics.
If you see a girl’s volleyball player get a scholarship offer from THE University of Akron, then it has to be a full ride.
If you see a girl’s volleyball player get a scholarship offer from Edinoboro, there’s no way to know how much the scholarship is worth.
No scholly allowed
Some leagues, conferences, and divisions don’t allow for any athletic scholarships to be given out at all.
- No Division 3 schools are allowed to give out athletic money.
- No Ivy League schools are allowed to give out athletic money.
- No Pioneer League schools are allowed to give out athletic money.
When someone gets “offered” by the school, they’re getting offered support through the application process (i.e. a higher chance of getting into the school) and a roster spot on the team.
Here are the numbers
Without further ado, here are the scholarship numbers for the sports that we work with most often. (I’ve included the number of high school athletes for that sport to give context of how many people are vying for scholarships.)
*These numbers assume that each school is fully funded, which they’re not. The league might allow them to give out 63 scholarships, but the athletic budget might only fund them with 50.
*The number of scholarships is for the entire team, not per recruiting class. So, a D1 women’s volleyball team only has 12 girls on the entire team that are on an athletic scholarship.
Is this all worth it?
Financially
To consider it a break even investment financially, from the time your athlete is 11 to 18 years old, each year you would need to spend less than
- $8,285 (with an average D1 scholarship) or
- $3,428 (with an average D2 scholarship) on sports.
That’s assuming that a scholarship is guaranteed, which it isn’t.
Look at the baseball chart above, there are 482,000 athletes vying for 5,792 scholarships at the D1 and D2 level.
Yes, those scholarships can be split. But, they can’t be split infinitely and each time they do get split, their value plummets.
Immeasurable benefits
Not every part of the recruiting process can be measured financially, though. Sometimes being good at a sport can help you do things you would never be able to do otherwise.
I was “offered” by a bunch of Ivy League schools. I was smart, but I was no Ivy League candidate. I wasn’t getting into Harvard without being a good football player.
My thoughts
Investing significant money into your child’s athletic career with the main objective of getting a college scholarship has a poor ROI.
However, investing in your child’s athletic career with the main objective being athlete development has a much higher ROI.
The role of an athletic career should be to:
- Optimize athletic potential
- Maximize athletic enjoyment
- Instill lifelong health behaviors
- Instill translatory life skills
- Minimize injury cost
If they get some scholarship money out of it, that’s just a bonus.
Some additional common questions…
Why do women’s sports have so many scholarships/teams compared to their men’s counterpart?
Mostly because of football.
Scholarship totals at a college have to be equal between men and women on a whole (Title IV).
Football is a men’s only sport with a huge scholarship count, which means more women’s scholarships have to be offered in other sports.
What is the difference between a walk-on and a preferred walk-on (PWO)?
A walk-on in general is someone who is on the team with no athletic scholarship.
A PWO is someone who was recruited by the coaches and is guaranteed a roster spot.
A regular walk-on is someone who was not recruited and does not have a guaranteed roster spot. They likely attend an open try-out to get on the team.
What are NAIA and JuCo schools?
- NAIA is an alternative to the NCAA. It’s an athletics assosication that “serves he interests of small colleges by driving student-athlete enrollment and financial sustainability.”
- JuCO is short for junior college. JuCos offer 2-year programs. Athletes will often go to JuCos in order to get perform well and improve academics with the hopes of getting an NCAA scholarship.
A quick thought on taking a break
There are a lot of important things in life and not enough time to do all of them. We often have to choose between 2 important things, decide which one is more important, and prioritize that.
I have to remind myself of this constantly. On my whiteboard in front of me, I have my work priorities listed out.
Currently, my top 3 are:
- Train and rehab our active athletes
- Find and hire a new coach
- Write newsletter
Over the next several months, I won’t be able to make it to #3.
#1 and #2 are going to take up all of my time, until I find the elite level coach that I’m looking for (if you know a great sports performance/ strength and conditioning coach who wants good pay and good work/life balance, please send them here.)
I’m hoping to get out one newsletter per month. BUT, when I get back, I have some really, really big plans for the athlete development community.
We’re going to make navigating life as a sports parent much more manageable in the second half of 2024.
A couple of important things…
- This newsletter is completely free. I spend many hours each week researching, writing, and illustrating (okay, maybe the drawings don’t take that long). The best way you can support it and allow it continue is to share it with people you know. You can just send them to gtperformance.co and they can subscribe there!
- Everything in these newsletters and on our website is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice for you or you athlete. Consult directly with a healthcare professional.
Thanks so much for your help in spreading the word about athlete development!
Be >,
Zach
Dr. Zach Guiser, PT, DPT, CSCS