Fordham, Atlantic 10 React to NCAA Cost of Attendance Vote

On Jan. 17, the NCAA's Power Five conferences (Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and Southeastern) voted in favor of providing cost-of-attendance scholarships that will give student-athletes money for certain costs not currently included in traditional scholarships.

Though not part of the Power Five, the Atlantic 10 Conference committed to cost-of-attendance scholarships last November. In an email sent to beat writers on Jan. 18, the A-10 announced its plan to implement the scholarships for men's and women's basketball following the NCAA ruling.

What does this mean for Fordham, a member of the conference since 1994?

"It's good," Fordham athletic director David Roach told Bleacher Report last Thursday. "You want to be competitive, and if people are doing it, we want to do it to be competitive.

"And in fairness to a lot of kids, it's probably what we should be doing."

Roach first discussed the issue with Bleacher Report last summer. He said then that he supported full cost of attendance for scholarships but added, "it's kind of a troubling road we're going down."

Now that we're further down that road—though far from home—Roach offered this assessment of where things stand.

"You almost have to back up a little bit and kind of say, 'How did we get to this point?'" he said.

"We got to this point because what they're calling the Big Five power conferences went after the TV dollar, and to go after the TV dollar, they realigned conferences and really have gone after more and more money. And they're all revenue driven.

"Because of that, they get heat and pressure from the media saying, 'You just hired [Jim] Harbaugh at $5 million a year, Nick Saban is making $7 million a year, Mike Krzyzewski is making $9 million...and Shabazz Napier is going to bed hungry, if you believe that...the coaches and the schools are getting all the money, and what are the kids getting?'

"You've gone from intercollegiate athletics being part of the educational process and great for everybody and a learning experience and all the things everybody always talks about...so now, we're at the point where they've got to do something."

Roach said that four years ago, when NCAA President Mark Emmert held a presidential summit, the idea of providing cost-of-attendance scholarships was brought up.

"Even some of the big schools didn't want to do it because they didn't want to do it for every sport," Roach said. "Now, they've been backed into a corner, and they feel like they have to do something because there are so many lawsuits, everybody's all over them."

Roach said athletes would be free to use the money at their discretion while adding cost of attendance "is a federally regulated number that your financial aid office determines depending [on] your student body.

"If we bring someone in here who comes from a tough background and you just give them tuition, room, board, books and no spending money or money to go back and forth, that's not fair. So they came up with cost of attendance to alleviate some of that."

He then went on to explain the A-10's thinking.

"The A-10 is saying, 'Because we're a basketball-centric league, we're committed, and everybody's going to do it in men's and women's basketball, and then after that, it's kind of up to the institution.'"

For now, Fordham will offer the scholarships only to men's and women's basketball players. Roach said that any future action to provide money in other sports will be an "institutional decision." (In November, the school announced it would offer four-year athletic scholarships as opposed to the one-year renewable scholarships it currently offers.)

He said the full cost of attendance at Fordham would be in the neighborhood of $2,700 to $2,800 per person, a figure that isn't "earth-shattering." 

"It's different for different schools," Roach said. "In the A-10, I know a couple are as low as $1,500. Some might be more than us; some are obviously less. It's never going to be the same."

It's becoming clearer by the day that neither will college athletics.

Quotations in this article were obtained firsthand.

Charles Costello covers the Fordham Rams for Bleacher Report. A full archive of his articles can be found here. Follow him on Twitter: @CFCostello