At Georgia Tech’s media day Saturday, athletic director Mike Bobinski outlined a stipend proposal that the ACC will present after the NCAA’s board of directors votes Thursday on a new governance structure that would grant more autonomy to the five power conferences. The vote is widely expected to pass, which would give the members of the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC, the ability to enact legislation separate from the remainder of Division I.
Probably the first matter to be legislated will be scholarships that include the full cost of attendance.
“Without a doubt, we are at the point where changing the value of the scholarship, its time has come,” Bobinski said. “That’s not going to go backwards at this point.”
The ACC’s model, which officials from member schools have considered at length, is need-based.
Athletes from higher-income families “would get some cost of attendance supplement or some enhanced scholarship value, but it wouldn’t be the same as somebody who has substantial need,” Bobinski said. “And that, to me, feels like the right thing.”
Bobinski said in that model, the expense for Tech’s athletic department would be between $500,000 and $600,000, which would be a little less than 1 percent of the department’s $73.7 million budget for the 2015 fiscal year.
In the proposal, athletes on partial scholarships would also be included to some measure. Bobinski said that ACC commissioner John Swofford and school presidents have already been speaking with colleagues about the proposal.
He made a plea that the policy be made based on the best interests of the students.
When new legislation is created, he said, “everybody immediately looks at it to say, ‘How can I get an advantage from this new circumstance?’ I think, given where we are as an industry at this point, it’s time for us to say, not, ‘How can I get an advantage?’ but ‘What’s the right thing for us to do?’”
