[jayasena]

I know a former (heavily recruited) scholarship football player who didn't really like football and used it to get a scholarship.  He "went through the motions" to stay on the team for four years, and in his fifth year, as soon as his last semester of financial aid was locked in, he quit the team in October.

While I'm sure there will be a small number of athletes in revenue sports* who would abuse a system that guarantees multi-year scholarships, I'm inclined to think the problem would be much less severe than what some coaches are doing today and certainly no worse than the downsides of multi-year contracts for coaches or tenure for faculty.

That said, I agree with Garvin that requiring 4-year scholarships can have unexpected side-effects. Might be interesting to see how the experiment by SC and others will play out. Essentially, using 4-year scholarships as an additional promotional tool and letting the "market" decide if that's something the recruits place sufficient value on. If that appears to give SC or others a sufficient advantage, other schools may be forced to adopt the same. Of course, the obvious downside to this is that markets work well when the participants are well-informed and rational. Does that sound like the description of a typical 17- or 18-year-old?  ???

*I can see this being more of a problem for non-revenue sports.

[jayasena]

I know a former (heavily recruited) scholarship football player who didn't really like football and used it to get a scholarship.  He "went through the motions" to stay on the team for four years, and in his fifth year, as soon as his last semester of financial aid was locked in, he quit the team in October.

While I'm sure there will be a small number of athletes in revenue sports* who would abuse a system that guarantees multi-year scholarships, I'm inclined to think the problem would be much less severe than what some coaches are doing today and certainly no worse than the downsides of multi-year contracts for coaches or tenure for faculty.

That said, I agree with Garvin that requiring 4-year scholarships can have unexpected side-effects. Might be interesting to see how the experiment by SC and others will play out. Essentially, using 4-year scholarships as an additional promotional tool and letting the "market" decide if that's something the recruits place sufficient value on. If that appears to give SC or others a sufficient advantage, other schools may be forced to adopt the same. Of course, the obvious downside to this is that markets work well when the participants are well-informed and rational. Does that sound like the description of a typical 17- or 18-year-old?  ???

*I can see this being more of a problem for non-revenue sports.