2022 Top 20 HS Draft Prospects
- Thread starter mrschwump
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That is an incredibly high number. Will be interesting to see how many of them they actually will keep and how many will go pro. Seems like most would go pro, but you never know if they might be able to grab one or two.
Doesn't seem like NIL is hurting them too much.
Highest rated commit, 2 or 3 I don't recall, is Andruw Jones kid who if he's half as good as pops will be awesome.
Of course, not surprised when you can pretty much give a free ride to every player.
Yeah, doubtful Vandy keeps all of those guys but don't think they'll be hurting either.
Don't know that I understand all of that but it's an uneven playing field that needs correcting.
Andruw Jones to this day is the best defensive outfielder I have ever seen. No one made the position look as effortless as Jones. He made every play look easy.
Saw him play AA ball several times, one game sticks out: Went 3 for 5 with 2 HRs/5 RBI and threw out a runner at home AND third. Oh, he was 18 at the time.
Basically Vandy has a needs based scholarship fund available to all students who make under a certain amount of money. That certain amount is very high...like over 6 figures for a family. So, a large portion of Vandy students will be on a needs based scholarship. This would include baseball players that don't get athletic scholarships. I don't know if this means that most students pay nothing or if it means they pay similar amounts to what you might pay at a state university, or what. Still, it works because it is available to all students and not just an athlete. I also suppose any school with the means could have a similar program.
Thanks for the explanation. Surely Vandy isn't the only school that has the capacity to do this but if they are it gives them a huge advantage. Just seems like others would follow.
Well, Vandy only has about 7,000 people enrolled in their undergrad program. Compare that to UK, which has over 22,000. So, the numbers are probably a lot more feasible than at a public school, and they probably make more of their money off of post-graduate degrees.
So what this means is the 11.7 scholarships that most schools have to distribute between their 35 man roster, Vandy does not. Also, for regular schools an athletic scholarship cannot exceed the amount for any other type scholarships they may receive.
The minimum required scholarship by the NCAA is 25%. So if you give 4 players 25%, there is one scholarship. That is not much if you attend an out-of-state school. It's broken down into cost of attendance which comes to a dollar amount then they can break that 25% up any way they want. (Example: take 15% towards tuition, 10% towards housing, etc) So in reality, regular schools can't compete when you have to offer a lot more money for an elite athlete to attend, especially if its out-of-state. Sometimes a school will ask an in-state player to reduce their scholarship amount since it costs them less to attend, and then they will add that amount on to an out-of-state player.
To be fair, we don't know if this gives Vandy an advantage or just levels the playing field enough for them to do extremely well. According to wiki, before aid, it is around 73k to go to Vandy for 1 year. Compare that to UT which is 32K before aid for one year (out of state). So, if Vandy gave a scholarship that essentially made the cost of attendance the same as it would be for UT, for an out of state student, then one could argue that they've financially leveled the playing field and it is then their academics that is helping them to land those guys over UT.
If, on the other hand, those students are getting 100 percent full rides and can attend Vandy for free when they would have to pay 32,000 a year to go to UT, then that is clearly a distinct advantage, only made greater by the fact that Vandy has great academics.
I am not sure what their needs based program looks like and how much it gives. According to wiki, it says that after aid Vandy is about 20k per year and UT is about 19k per year. So, take that for the little bit it is worth.
Doesn’t Duke have a similar deal? Seems like I read Vandy, and I thought Duke, had similar deals and gave them an upper hand in baseball over the state schools.
Probably. Most private schools have similar things where they give our scholarships extremely liberally. I know even the small college in my home town (D3 size) is extremely expensive, but they give out a whole lot of scholarships to almost everyone enrolled so it kind of levels things out some. That isn't designed at the local college to help with sports, but to incentivize people (especially locals) to attend there.
A curious part of it is that it doesn’t seem to necessarily help Vandy or Duke in every sport. Vandy is really only good in the one. So, if it is this that is giving them an advantage, why is it only helping them in baseball and not in other sports with scholarship limitations?
I wish I knew a parent of a current player or former player to see how Vandy does it.
It certainly is an advantage especially since Corbin has built them into a Top 3 program.
This is from an article written right after the CWS:
Mike Irwin: How Vanderbilt Baseball Keeps Legally “Cheating” Its Way to the Top
Near the top is the way they have gotten around the NCAA limit on the number of scholarships each NCAA Division I team can award to its players.
Under NCAA rules, a Division 1 baseball team’s 11.7 scholarships can be divided between a maximum of 27 players on a 35-player roster, with all players on athletic scholarship having to receive a minimum of a 25 percent scholarship.
That leaves room for eight walk-ons.
But Vanderbilt, a private school, gets around this through Opportunity Vanderbilt, which promised that any student who was admitted to the school would not be prevented from attending due to cost of tuition.
“The school looked at each student’s family income, how much it could reasonably provide for their child to attend Vanderbilt, and subtracted that from the regular cost (Vanderbilt’s tuition for the 2018-19 school year was over $70,000),” according to The Post and Courier.
Opportunity Vanderbilt allows the Vanderbilt baseball program to “legally cheat,” Irwin said on a recent Pig Trail Nation episode of “Ask Mike.”
“Every year there are a lot of kids that come from low-income families, and there’s no way they can afford to go play college baseball, because they’re not even getting the full scholarship,” Irwin points out.
“Their parents would have to kick in, and they can’t afford to.”
“So what do these kids do? They go straight to minor league baseball, and take their bonus money and go on.”
“Well, Vanderbilt gets around this by saying, ‘Hey. Hang on. We’ll bring you in here. What’s your family income?'”
“And then they determine, ‘Okay, you only have to pay this. Because that’s not going as a part of the [athletic] scholarship money that person would have, they can apply more of it to their room and board.”
The end result of Opportunity Vanderbilt, which is based on similar programs at other private colleges like the Ivy League schools and Rice, is Vanderbilt gets more players and better players than most other SEC schools.
Vanderbilt baseball head Tim Corbin admitted this system helps his program a lot.
“We have more of an inroad to a kid that is (in a) lower economic (situation) who wants to be here, can be here because of his economic situation,” Corbin said.
“Does it hurt us? Yeah, because we don’t get every kid we want.”
“But you also understand, it is an advantage for us, there is no doubt.”
Irwin doesn’t see why the SEC allows this workaround.
“I’ve never understood why the conference puts up with this, but they do. They’ve done some things… to help some of the other schools, but it’s still not really equal.”
“The only way I can figure it out is they think, ‘Well, we got to have this private school in the SEC because it’s got great academic reputation, and they don’t win in anything, so we’ll let them win in baseball.'”
“That’s the only thing I can figure out.”
So Al Leiter, Jack Leiter's dad, and a long time MBL pitcher and probably a multi-millionaire, is economically disadvantaged? As is Tracy Rocker, Kumar Rocker's pops and a long time college football asst coach who, if he isn't a millionaire is damned close to it? And apparently Andruw Jones kid is next in line. This shouldn't be allowed to happen.
Why?...what's keeping the rest from following suit ?
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The answer to most questions is always the same….MONEY.
State schools don’t have the resources that Private schools CAN have. The Privates can basically do what they want with their money.
I had not opened this topic, so I apologize if I’m late to it.
It’s a University decision but Kentucky is near the bottom in the SEC in giving baseball players extra aide. I’ve had conversations with those in the know on this topic because they’ve had multiple kids recruited.
What makes me so mad is that UL has one of the best money situations in the country. Of all the schools to be doing that, of course it’s them.
It’s a University decision but Kentucky is near the bottom in the SEC in giving baseball players extra aide. I’ve had conversations with those in the know on this topic because they’ve had multiple kids recruited.
What makes me so mad is that UL has one of the best money situations in the country. Of all the schools to be doing that, of course it’s them.
