NAIA

This is for anyone who has been an SID or perhaps AD/SID at an NAIA school.
How can an athletic program bring in 200 kids for football, half of whom are ineligible and must take pre-college or remedial classes to qualify, then have no real revenue? NCAA schools have scholarship limits and multiple revenue sources. Said NAIA schools seem to add a new program every year. If you ask them, they're very secretive about their funding being a private school. Just seems rotten in Denmark, so to speak (and no, Denmark has no NAIA school).

Just curious as to how this works. Pell grant abuse?

 

Public or private? Know of a public NAIA school with more than 120 players on the football team. Doesn't travel more than 300 miles, though, for road games.

 

I am convinced that some NAIA (and NCAA Division III schools) used sports like football primarily as a means to entice students to campus (not necessarily because they are great in the sport).

They may get some kind of aid (they'd probably get anyway) and a uniform but their real contribution is paying tuition.

 

I was recruited to play Division III football. I didn't play high school football.

 

Can you explain, @Matt Stephens?

 

They absolutely do this. And not just in football.

There's nothing wrong with it either.

 

Well, except maybe when you get down to what's supposed to be the true mission of educational institutions ...

 

A Texas 5A high school could beat a typical NCAA D-III team.

 

Guessing a simple letter in the mail.

 

To make money.

 

It is product differentiation. Private schools have to desperately compete against subsidized public universities.

If 40 kids a year enroll at a school to play football at a school with a freshman class of 400 that is 10% of the enrollment. Will most of those kids stick it out? No, because ultimately only 22 start and the third stringers fade away. But the the third stringers may well stay at the school because they generally like the school.

I had a relative pass up big State U for a smaller private school because he wanted to continue playing the sport he played in high school. Once he got there he realized he did not have the talent to play at even the NAIA level. But he had made friends so he stayed for four years. He got some aid from the private school and I was told that it was only a bit more expensive than Big State. But to the school he attended picked up 100k in revenue.