Airfare. Bills. Sports equipment. And food, lots of food.
Those are only a few of the items that Georgia Tech’s football players said they have purchased with the first half of the $2,000 cost-of-attendance stipend that they received at the beginning of the fall semester. They will receive the final $1,000 at the beginning of the next semester.
“It definitely came as a relief to a lot of guys, especially the young guys, guys who aren’t working,” offensive lineman Errin Joe said. “With a guy like me who has a degree, you’re able to work and get money. But the guys who have some costs and everything outside football, definitely. It definitely helps.”
The stipends were doled out for the first time after the NCAA’s Power Five conferences passed legislation in January to allow schools to supplement scholarship with a stipend to cover cost-of-living expenses.
The amount of the stipend varies by school because each school calculates costs differently within the federal guidelines they agreed to use. Some schools include travel allowances and takes health-care costs into its equation. Others don’t.
Tech athletic director Mike Bobinski earlier this year estimated that providing stipends to approximately 225 scholarship athletes will cost the athletic department around $500,000. He said he was going to solicit donors to fit the costs into the school's $76.7 million budget.
But the money is appreciated.
Paying for phone bills and utilities was a common answer to what they do with the money. Offensive lineman Shamire Devine said he uses some of his to pay his phone bill and for his mom to help pay her bill. Some of the rest he sends some home to help defray the costs of football cleats for his brother, Dakwon, and basketball gear for his sister, Taleesha. He said he can afford to do that because he doesn’t have a car, which helps him manage his expenses.
“It’s helped a lot,” he said.
Trey Klock is from Pennsylvania. He has tried to budget his stipend to pay for airfare, which can cost between $200-300. He said Tech coach Paul Johnson met with the players before the money was given to explain to the players what and why they were receiving it.
“I think I’ve been responsible with it,” Klock said. “I think a lot of guys have appreciated the help.”
But the No. 1 thing the players use the money for is food.
From a quick trip to McDonald’s when they don’t have time between classes to get across campus to the dining hall, to going out with teammates for a Mexican dinner to break up the monotony of the dining hall, ingesting calories seems to be the main result of spending currency.
“It feels so much better to have money in your pockets instead of feeling broke,” Mikell Lands-Davis said.
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