By PETE IACOBELLI Cody McDavis’ life changed forever with a few strokes of a pen. McDavis grew up in a single-parent home where his mother worked three jobs to afford life’s essentials. There was zero chance of paying for college if not for a basketball scholarship to Northern Colorado.
“The assumption was if I didn’t get a scholarship, I was not going to college,” recalled McDavis, now an attorney for a Los Angeles-based firm. Scholarships are not going away in college athletics, but how many there are and which sports they will apply to in coming years are among the many questions stemming from a mammoth antitrust settlement and athlete revenue-sharing plan proposed by the NCAA and its five largest conferences last week. Nearly $2.
8 billion in damages over 10 years must come from somewhere. Scholarship limits for individual teams are expected to be lifted. That could mean even more scholarships available from certain schools for money-makers like football or basketball.
It could mean that programs like baseball and softball — which have to slice and dice scholarships each season — could be fully funded. But even the wealthiest schools may have to make tough choices when it comes to investing in which sports. The days of the straightforward national letter of intent, first implemented in 1964, are likely a thing of the past.
“I do think the athletic scholarship is going to change. I think the relationship between college and the athlete is going to change,”.
