Gotta love those Vandy propagandists. They are persistent and on the lookout to champ down on this talk. Don't buy it. Here's a quick quote from a 2016 interview Kendall Rogers did with then new NCAA managing director of championships and alliances Ron Prettyman. This Q & A was in reference to the advantages school's like Vandy enjoy:
Question: One of the burning questions in college baseball right now is the issue of institutional (need-based) aid and how that creates advantages and disadvantages. What’s your approach on that issue?
Prettyman: You’re right, it’s a big issue, and that’s a great observation. I think there needs to be some rules in place there, but I honestly haven’t monitored that as closely in the past as I am now. But, I agree, there needs to be some sort of consistency across the board from that perspective. I want to make sure some of the loopholes are either limited or completely closed off, making it more difficult to do some of those things that creates advantages. Some things, though, will be harder to push through than others. I don’t really have a firm stance on that issue more than that for now.
And there is this:
Fitt: Don’t Expect Institutional Aid Reform
Aaron Fitt - January 11, 2016
SEE ALSO: ABCA Notebook: Big Changes On Horizon?
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The rise of Vanderbilt and Virginia to the top of the college baseball world has prompted plenty of indignation from rival coaches about the way those schools and others like Stanford, Rice and North Carolina can use financial aid and/or academic scholarships to supplement their 11.7 athletic scholarships. It’s no secret that Vanderbilt, in particular, has a huge advantage because of its massive amount of institutional aid; it doesn’t even have to sign many players to a National Letter of Intent, because it doesn’t need to give many players any athletic scholarship money at all.
The NCAA’s new baseball head, Ron Prettyman, raised some alarms last week when he told Kendall Rogers, “I want to make sure some of the loopholes are either limited or completely closed off, making it more difficult to do some of those things that creates advantages.”
But that response was out of step with the position of ABCA executive director Craig Keilitz, who represents college baseball’s coaches.
“Being an equivalency sport, we’re always going to have those issues. Schools that have more financial aid, that’s fantastic in the big scheme, because we’re giving more opportunities to student-athletes,” Keilitz said. “Now, it is uneven, and could be construed as unfair, but that’s where we are right now — 11.7 scholarships for 35 student-athletes, that doesn’t add up. So there’s a lot of moving pieces that we need to do to improve our game and give opportunities to young men to get an education and play baseball. It’s a very, very complex situation that there’s no easy answer for.”