NCAA weighing $2,000 payments to student athletes
In an AP article on si.com, the author discusses NCAA President Mark Emmert’s backing of a proposal that would allow conferences to increase grants to student athletes by $2000. This increase would be meant “to more closely approach” the full cost of attending college, beyond the cost of tuition, room and board, fees, and books.
Emmert told the Knight Commission that a final proposal will be finished this week and that he would ask for support from the NCAA Division 1 Board of Directors. He stated that he realized that athletes don’t have the opportunities to work because of the time commitment to sports and school and that the athletic scholarship model has not changed for 40 years.
President Emmert also claimed that he expected all of the BCS Conferences to adopt the proposal due to the fact that they have the money to afford such a payment program, but he did not know if the smaller conferences would adopt it.
Personally, I really like this proposal to increase the amount covered by scholarships for student athletes. Pay for play has been such a hot button topic over the past few years, and I feel that this is a perfect medium between the two sides. Hopefully the proposal will be adopted and put into effect soon to help out today’s student athletes.
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College Sports and the Media 
I feel like this proposal is a good solution to the pay-for-play discussion. It seems diplomatic in the sense that it gives players more money yet is still doing it through the typical scholarship system. I will be interested to see who adopts this. It will also be interesting to see, if this is adopted by BCS conferences, how recruitment for non-BCS conferences who do not adopt the proposal will change.