Boise State plans to implement “full cost-of-attendance funding for all 235.5 of its scholarships,” according to Chadd Cripe of the IDAHO STATESMAN. The school has estimated the “average cost at $5,000 per scholarship for 2015-16 for a total cost” of close to $1.18M. BSU AD Mark Coyle said, “If you want to compete at a high level, you’ve got to do it. You have no choice.” Cripe reported from the outset, the school planned to “fund the upgrade in all sports rather than limiting it to some combination of football, men’s basketball and an equivalent number of women’s scholarships.” Coyle still needs to figure out “how to pay the bill" as the BSU budget -- $37M for '14-15 -- "continues to expand.” He has pegged the $300,000 annual increase in fees “generated by the contract extension with multimedia partner Learfield and the revenue from the Albertsons Stadium naming contract” for cost of attendance. Albertsons will contribute $472,159 for the ’15-16 season, but that “still leaves a $400,000 funding gap” (IDAHO STATESMAN, 2/15).
HERD MENTALITY: In West Virginia, Grant Taylor reported Marshall also is “preparing to offer scholarship athletes cost-of-attendance allowances.” Conference USA ADs, including Marshall’s Mike Hamrick, “discussed the topic at their Winter meetings and decided to move forward” with the concept. Hamrick said, “What we did in Conference USA is we voted that each institution will give cost of attendance, but you don’t have to do it. You can do it to the max or you can do it for some sports, but not other sports. What we at Marshall have chosen to do to be competitive in all sports is to provide our student-athletes, starting with the 2015-16 year, with cost of attendance. We estimate it will cost us approximately $700,000. Taylor noted the exact amount per athlete “has not yet been finalized” (Huntington HERALD-DISPATCH, 2/15).
GONE BABY GONE: In San Jose, Mark Emmons in a front-page piece notes the Menlo College football team this month “was blindsided by the announcement that the university no longer could afford the steep costs” associated with the team. Local schools such as Santa Clara, St. Mary’s, S.F. State and Cal State-East Bay have “dropped the expensive sport over the years,” leaving only Cal, Stanford and San Jose State fielding teams. While the end of football at Menlo "barely registered a blip on the region’s sports radar,” it “hit like a bombshell that continues to reverberate” on campus. Former Menlo RB Jake Fohn said, “It’s not like we go to school with 40,000 kids. If you cut the football program, that’s one-seventh of our student body who no longer feels like it’s part of the school and no longer want to be here.” Emmons notes Menlo was the lone NAIA school “playing football in California, and there were only three NAIA opponents within a 700-mile radius.” School President Richard Moran said, “There’s about 60 colleges in the Bay Area, but there’s just nobody for us to play. We had games scheduled in North Dakota, Indiana and Florida next season. Each game was going to cost tens of thousands of dollars in travel. It just became impossible to justify allocating so many resources to football” (SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, 2/18).
