Vandy scholarships...

60sdog

Senior
Oct 9, 2010
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I wish something could be done by the SEC about the scholarship advantage Vanderbilt has in baseball. Scholarships are equal in every other major sport but baseball
 

bruiser.sixpack

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Aug 13, 2009
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Their advantage didn’t look too strong tonight.

They got their run on a hit batter and a pop fly double that found the right spot. Otherwise, their hitters sucked worse than ours tonight.
 

TrueMaroonGrind

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The SEC will do what's best for the SEC. Winning as many championchips as a possible is their goal. Evening the playing field in this case isn't in their best interest. It will never happen.
 

maroonmania

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NCAA is who regulates scholarship restrictions. Seems that would be more on them than the SEC. But the NCAA doesn't care enough about baseball to make it fair. You already have the states with in state lottery scholarships with an advantage as well.
 

Cat Duck

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Why was Vandy a nobody until Corbin got there?

Why does Georgia and Tennessee consistently underachieve in baseball? I mean they have lotteries.
 

maroonmania

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Why was Vandy a nobody until Corbin got there?

Why does Georgia and Tennessee consistently underachieve in baseball? I mean they have lotteries.

All I know is that right now Vandy is getting a much higher percentage of Top 10 round draft picks to come to school than anyone else in the SEC or anyone else in the nation that I know of. Corbin is a good coach but he has more physical talent in his program than anyone else.
 

Go Budaw

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All I know is that right now Vandy is getting a much higher percentage of Top 10 round draft picks to come to school than anyone else in the SEC or anyone else in the nation that I know of. Corbin is a good coach but he has more physical talent in his program than anyone else.

Top 10 academic school in the country + Top 5 city in the country for young people + recruiting for a sport where kids value those things = big advantage. Has nothing to do with scholarships. They sucked before Corbin because they didn’t prioritize the sport. One good hire was all it took.
 

8dog

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Stricklin is starting to get it done at georgia. The kid that started yesterday was a top 3 round guy had he not wanted so much. And even with perno who doesnt even coach baseball anymore they went to multiple cws and the finals. You can sleepwalk through that job

TN lottery based scholarships arent nearly as lucrative as GA and LA
 

8dog

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There are a lot of good things and corbins rep is enormous but the scholarship advantage is real. If a kid had to pay 50% out of pocket (about 22k) i dont think he would care much about nashville or vandys acadmic rep

”no school in the country has the scholarship advantages vandy has”- kendall rogers
 
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Go Budaw

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There are a lot of good things and corbins rep is enormous but the scholarship advantage is real. If a kid had to pay 50% out of pocket (about 22k) i dont think he would care much about nashville or vandys acadmic rep

”no school in the country has the scholarship advantages vandy has”- kendall rogers

Except everybody has started figuring out ways to supplement the athletic scholarships with “leadership scholarships” and things of that nature from private sources. Vandy isn’t doing anything other schools aren’t in that regard, but they are doing it to a much greater extent than their other academic counterparts like Stanford, etc. The difference between them and the rest of the SEC is that their tuition is higher, so it equates to a much larger benefit for the player because they are giving out more money and providing a much higher quality education.

So to that end, Rogers quote is accurate, but their real advantage in terms of scholarships is over those other high end academic institutions that aren’t pulling the same strings that they are. The advantage they have over the rest of the SEC is more related to to their location, academics, and proximity to talent in a large metro area.

For example, MSU offers some kid from, say, Birmingham a 50% ride from athletic scholarship + the other 50% from outside sources, and Vandy offers the same thing, where do you think he’s gonna go?
 
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patdog

Heisman
May 28, 2007
59,083
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Schools have been knowing how to supplement the 11.7 athletic scholarships from other sources, including but not limited to academic scholarships, for a very long time. But there's limits to how much you can do. Vandy can have 35 full scholarships every year. A school like MSU can maybe get to maybe 20-25.
 

GloryDawg

Heisman
Mar 3, 2005
20,126
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I wish something could be done by the SEC about the scholarship advantage Vanderbilt has in baseball. Scholarships are equal in every other major sport but baseball


They have the same rules as everyone else it's just some trust money. Tenn has the same advantage but it doesn't help them. I really blame the NCAA for only allowing 9.5 scholarships in the first place. That is the most asinine **** they do.
 

8dog

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if all things are equal im guessing you would see more kids going a different direction than vandy.

Becaue when all things are equal, facilities and environment then become a priority. Why isnt vandy good at football or basketball? Plenty of talented kids in those sports that would love nashville and vandys academia in this country. Because the money is all the same

But i also think you are overestimating how easy it is for state to get the kind of dollars to kids that vandy does. do we do it? Absolutely. Is it easy? No. Cann supposedly made all juniors and seniors walk ons because he needed their baseball money.

stricklin admitted to a group one time that the only reason we arent a premier job is scholarships. He said if everyone got 25 full rides we would be a top 10 job
 
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patdog

Heisman
May 28, 2007
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They have the same rules as everyone else it's just some trust money. Tenn has the same advantage but it doesn't help them. I really blame the NCAA for only allowing 9.5 scholarships in the first place. That is the most asinine **** they do.
It's 11.7, but the point is the same. Whatever the NCAA limit is though, the real problem is they even allow academic supplements to not count against the limit. They don't allow that for football or basketball and they shouldn't allow it for baseball.
 

blacklistedbully

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Found this post on an aTm board, purportedly from a former TCU ball-player. Interesting, if true:

Frog fan and former player here - just wanted to chime in and correct some misunderstandings regarding TCU having an advantage because it's private. While certain schools like Vandy, Stanford, and Rice do have a decided advantage in baseball because of the gigantic endowments relative to size of student body, Tcu is not in that class. In order to be permissible, the school can only offer aid to players on the same basis that it is offered to the entire student body. Otherwise, it would be cheating.

So Vanderbilt, rice, and Stanford all give need based financial aid to every student enrolled - you basically pay what you can afford. This allows them to draw from a pool of talent that tcu just can't. Tcu has to spread the 11.7 scholarships around and then find kids whose parents can afford to foot the rest of the bill. I only wish the school endowment was large enough to offer aid to the entire student body, but we aren't even close.


Frankly, if there were any reason Schloss would ever leave, it would be because he is at a decided competitive disadvantage to less expensive schools. It's tough making 11.7 work anywhere, but especially when yearly tuition is above $50k as it is now at TCU.
 

blacklistedbully

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While athletic scholarship awards favor schools with lower tuition, it does not account for private school's ability to take advantage of other forms of financial aid not typically available to public schools, even when some of those public schools offer some additional aid.


Keep in mind, 11.7 scholarships need to be split among 27 players, with none receiving less than 25%. Most programs offer significantly higher percentages to stud pitchers these days, so you're most likely looking at higher than 50% for each one. Now you have to do the math and account for the fact that you can't give less than 25% to any of the 27. So there are only so many players to whom we can offer high percentages.


If we offered all 27 the same amount, by rule we'd only be able to offer a 43% athletic scholarship. We can supplement some with additional forms of aid, but as a public institution we have to also abide by federal and state rules governing merit and need-based scholarships. By rule, we can also only offer athletic scholarships to a max of 27 players (since 2009).


Vandy, on the other hand, can offer up to 100% cost of attendance to all 35 on their roster. If they wanted, they could also admit as many more as they want that they don't claim on their roster, and have those pay only what they can afford, whether it's $1 or more. They just can't include more than 35 on their roster at any given time.

You are correct in that Vandy does take more advantage of this than other private schools. Opportunity Vanderbilt has been a boon to their program.
 

blacklistedbully

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From an article quoting Athletics Director Ron Wellman of Wake Forest :

http://www.journalnow.com/college-ba...c6013f51f.html
Rule exceptions: Endowment

If no private schools ever flourished in baseball, the NCAA might feel compelled to take action. But Vanderbilt, TCU, Rice and Stanford have fielded programs that have thrived in recent seasons; in fact, Vanderbilt happens to be the defending national champion. Meanwhile, Georgia Tech, also a private institution, has won two of the past four ACC titles.

The explanation is that all of those schools spend more on academic or need-based scholarships for baseball, at least partly because they can. Wake Forest's total endowment for 2014 was $1.148 billion, which is quite a bit of coin but decidedly less than the endowments of Rice ($5.5 billion), Stanford ($21.4 billion) or even Duke ($7 billion). TCU has invested a larger portion of its $1.4 billion endowment on baseball, but the school most famous for supplementing its baseball scholarships with academic or need-based grants has been Vanderbilt.

"They're well-endowed and so they're able to do things with financial aid based upon need that a lot of other institutions have not been able to do," Wellman said. "And they've been very judicious in the manner in which they've done it."

In 1998, Vanderbilt received the largest gift that had ever been given to an American college or university.

The Ingram Charitable Fund, whose chairwoman, Martha R. Ingram was the daughter, wife and mother of Vanderbilt graduates, donated stock valued at more than $300 million to the school.

"That really turned that university around, really shot that university ahead, "Walter said. "It's not only an athletic issue, it's an academic issue as well. It helps Vanderbilt get top, top students. That's why you see Vanderbilt ranked in the Top 15 of universities because they get a higher yield of the kids they offer because they offer better financial packages.

"There's a direct correlation to endowment and size of packages, and academic scholarships."

Vanderbilt's endowment of $4 billion is only part of the story. What has helped Tim Corbin coach the Commodores into the elite circle of baseball programs has been how willing the school has been to spend money on academic and need-based scholarships and the programs, frameworks and considerations it has established to do so.

Two notable Commodore baseball players of recent seasons have been left-hander David Price (now with the Detroit Tigers) and third baseman/first baseman Pedro Alvarez (of the Pittsburgh Pirates). Neither received athletic scholarships while attending Vanderbilt, which freed up money for Corbin to spend on other recruits.

"For schools like Vanderbilt, to use them as the example, the way they assess need-based scholarships is very different than us,'' Walter said.

"Vanderbilt just looks at their income, the income of the custodial parents. So if you get a divorced family situation where the father makes a million dollars a year but they live 51 percent of the time with the mom, who has no income, then it's a full financial-aid situation for that.

"So the point of all that is, for us and the way Wake looks at a person's balance sheet, one of the things they look at is their ability to borrow. So if they have a nice home that they can borrow against...."'
 

blacklistedbully

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From Vandy's own website:
https://giving.vanderbilt.edu/oppvu/


Starting in fall 2009, the university eliminated need-based loans in financial aid packages, replacing them with grants and scholarships. To ensure the ongoing success of this endeavor, Vanderbilt must continually grow the scholarship endowment. Scholarship endowment allows Vanderbilt to continue its commitment to need-blind admissions and to provide greater opportunities for talented students who cannot afford the full cost to attend Vanderbilt.
 

blacklistedbully

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# of times Vandy finished higher than 6th in the SEC the 7 years Corbin was HC prior to the last of the major scholarship changes = once. He averaged a 7th place finish.


# of times Vandy finished lower than 3rd in the 9 years since the last rule change = once. He's averaged a 2nd place finish since his program became the only one in the SEC not limited by any of the severe scholarship reductions.


Tim Corbin has benefited from his competition being way-laid by scholarship rule changes.


This is not to say Tim Corbin is a bad coach. I'm sure he has to be a better coach than the one who preceded him, as a poor coach can still lose even with advantages, but there is also no doubt that the biggest, most crippling changes that happened to everyone else all occurred after Corbin was well into his career at Vandy.


At Vandy, Tim Corbin does not have one player that has to pay a thin dime. Wanna know how Vandy can have all that star-power, always loaded with pitching, etc? Tell the best players in the area they can get a full-ride scholarship at an elite academic institution with appreciative, wealthy alums...or they can pay a big chunk of their own tuition at other SEC schools.


Corbin may well be a damn good coach, but there is just not any record of him being particularly successful as an HC without the advantages. The fact he was better than Roy Mewbourne before him doesn't mean a whole helluva lot to me.
 
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Aug 22, 2012
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You also have to consider that the student has to get into Vandy so how many low income kids are even getting accepted? Vandy has a large endowment so you can offer 100% paid tuition to anyone under X amount and the percentage of students accepting it is probably still low. Vandy only has 12,000 students so by offering it to all students it is essentially giving extra aid to student athletes along with a few under privileged kids.
 

blacklistedbully

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patdog, they can also offer full rides to anybody they want that they don't include on the official roster. Literally no restriction at all since they changed from, "need-based loans" to straight grants and schollies.
 

patdog

Heisman
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Getting into either Vanderbilt or Peabody College isn't a problem at all if you're a scholarship athlete.
 

maroonmania

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# of times Vandy finished higher than 6th in the SEC the 7 years Corbin was HC prior to the last of the major scholarship changes = once. He averaged a 7th place finish.


# of times Vandy finished lower than 3rd in the 9 years since the last rule change = once. He's averaged a 2nd place finish since his program became the only one in the SEC not limited by any of the severe scholarship reductions.


Tim Corbin has benefited from his competition being way-laid by scholarship rule changes.


This is not to say Tim Corbin is a bad coach. I'm sure he has to be a better coach than the one who preceded him, as a poor coach can still lose even with advantages, but there is also no doubt that the biggest, most crippling changes that happened to everyone else all occurred after Corbin was well into his career at Vandy.


At Vandy, Tim Corbin does not have one player that has to pay a thin dime. Wanna know how Vandy can have all that star-power, always loaded with pitching, etc? Tell the best players in the area they can get a full-ride scholarship at an elite academic institution with appreciative, wealthy alums...or they can pay a big chunk of their own tuition at other SEC schools.


Corbin may well be a damn good coach, but there is just not any record of him being particularly successful as an HC without the advantages. The fact he was better than Roy Mewbourne before him doesn't mean a whole helluva lot to me.

Yep, there is a lot more behind the scenes to the Vandy baseball program being so successful than a good education in a nice city. Essentially baseball is the one sport where Vandy can take full advantage of being a private school that can skirt NCAA scholarship limitations. One of the reasons I would not want Tim Corbin to be hired at MSU as HC is that I have no idea if he could be successful or not at a school that didn't give him the scholarship advantages that Vandy does.
 

patdog

Heisman
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True, they could go even above 35 full scholarships at least theoretically. Point is that while we can and do supplements the 11.7 athletic scholarships allowed, it has to be done with boundaries. We simply can't compete on an even field with Vanderbilt for scholarships. Vandy can put an academically average upper middle class baseball player on a full ride. We can't.
 

Go Budaw

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Schools have been knowing how to supplement the 11.7 athletic scholarships from other sources, including but not limited to academic scholarships, for a very long time. But there's limits to how much you can do. Vandy can have 35 full scholarships every year. A school like MSU can maybe get to maybe 20-25.

Vandy is not limited in the money because of their massive endowment and them tapping into that money for the scholarships. They have that endowment because of their academic stature, and thats what it always comes back to. I guess my point is that academic stature is where their real advantage lies because no one else in this region can match it. They are not doing anything that at least 5-10 other schools in the country couldn’t also do in regards to scholarships, it’s just that their isolation from those other institutions and their willingness to spend for the purpose of baseball is what sets them apart.
 

blacklistedbully

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Yep. Been hugely in their favor since 2009. This is why I didn't want Corbin over McDonnell or Schloss. As much success as Corbin has had at Vandy, if you look closely you will find it all correlates with the changes that occurred with scholarships and the roll out of, "Operation Vanderbilt".

Corbin's first 7 seasons at Vandy were not at all remarkable. Without the scholarhship advantages he later gained, his record was mediocre.
 

Go Budaw

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It's 11.7, but the point is the same. Whatever the NCAA limit is though, the real problem is they even allow academic supplements to not count against the limit. They don't allow that for football or basketball and they shouldn't allow it for baseball.

Is it explicitly stated that they don’t allow them for football or basketball?
 

VegasDawg13

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Jun 11, 2007
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He said if everyone got 25 full rides we would be a top 10 job
In the last four years, respectively, we've been a national seed and SEC champion, went to a Super Regional, made it to Omaha, and are about to be a national seed again plus whatever else we accomplish. This has been with 4 different coaches. We're already a top 10 job.
 

8dog

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Accomplishments and job are not the same thing. As kendall rogers pointed out the coaches value other things- namely scholarships and access to talent
 

patdog

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They're reasonably correlated. Other factors are fan support, salary, facilities, athletic dept. support, etc. You can damn well bet we're a top 10 job.
 

Go Budaw

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They're reasonably correlated. Other factors are fan support, salary, facilities, athletic dept. support, etc. You can damn well bet we're a top 10 job.

We are a Top 10 job, but 4 or 5 of the jobs ranked ahead of ours are in our same conference.
 

AdamDawgDude

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May 28, 2007
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That’s another item the Vandy faithful continue to mention. It doesn’t seem possible for two of the top ten high school players every year (just throwing out a number from their typical recruiting rankings) to have the academics for Vanderbilt. Logic would say that they waive virtually all academic requirements if you can play baseball.

Getting into either Vanderbilt or Peabody College isn't a problem at all if you're a scholarship athlete.
 
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maroonmania

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Wanted to bump this thread to say if you want to understand why Vandy has become a baseball power over the last few years, listen to Steve's Boneyard from yesterday. It was very enlightening to hear that Vandy, per what I heard, can put up to 5 baseball players PER YEAR on a full ride need-based scholarship. My assumption is that that is on top of the 11.7 scholarships available strictly for baseball scholarships. Just shows how inequitable the whole landscape of college baseball is and why Vandy gets more talent to bypass MLB than anyone else. Corbin is just taking full advantage of what he is able to do at a private school. Vandy is not what it has become because it has a beautiful campus or that Nashville is a beautiful town, its all about getting a Vandy education for free while also playing baseball for what's become a power program. Per what Steve said, Tulane had built their program up somewhat doing this for a while but has stopped over the last few years.
 

blacklistedbully

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I suspect Steve is underestimating what they do. This is straight from Vandy's website:

"We make three important commitments to U.S. Citizens and eligible non-citizens to ensure that students from many different economic circumstances can enroll at Vanderbilt:
  1. Since talent and promise recognize no social, cultural, economic, or geographic boundaries, our admissions process is need-blind for U.S. Citizens and eligible non-citizens.
  2. Vanderbilt will meet 100% of a family’s demonstrated financial need.
  3. Financial aid awards do not include loans. Instead of offering need-based loans to undergraduate students, Vanderbilt offers additional grant assistance. This does not involve income bands or "cut-offs" that impact or limit eligibility.
Opportunity Vanderbilt's three commitments place Vanderbilt among a small number of U.S. universities to adopt these philosophies and allocate the resources necessary to make a premier college education a reality for students and their families."

With this program, they can offer as many players as they want as much as they need...period, and all of it grants and/or scholarships, not loans. They can use the 11.7 in the way mandated by the NCAA then supplement that as much as they want from Opportunity Vanderbilt. If you are a player/player's family, do you give a damn where the free aid comes from? Does it matter to you if it comes from the 11.7 NCAA-mandated baseball scholarships or from the OV program?

Some schools close a little of the giant gap between Vandy and their school with stuff like lottery scholarships, academic scholarships, etc., but I'm not aware of any non-private that are virtually unlimited in what they can do. And most private schools don't do need-blind, no-loan aid like, or on the scale Vandy does as a matter of policy (and expense).

As I said before, if you look closely at Tim Corbin's track record, he and his program did not become elite until the NCAA started changing the rules on scholarships, making them extremely restrictive. With the OV program, the official scholarship restrictions, though still applying to Vandy, mean nothing to them because they can work around them as much as they want. Net effect is, while most other programs have severe restrictions, Vandy has effectively none.
 
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“Meanwhile, Georgia Tech, also a private institution, has won two of the past four ACC titles.”


^^^^ GA Tech is not a private school it’s public institution.
 

blacklistedbully

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This is incorrect. Vandy eliminated need-based loans. They simply award scholarships and grants to cover anything either or both parents can't swing without taking out loans or selling assets . They don't even consider a family's assets or net worth. For instance, if the parents are divorced and the father is a multi-millionaire giving millions to his wife in the divorce settlement, but the wife doesn't work, they can and do use her zero earned income to determine the grant will cover 100% of tuition, room & board, etc.

TCU is another private school that can offer some additional aid, but not nearly on the level Vandy does....not because they don't have large enough endowments, but because their own financial aid policies are more restrictive than Vandy's.
 
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