Spotlight answer

Q: Why are scholarship reductions and the cost of USC as a private institution being used as excuses for why the baseball team has hit an all-time low, when other private schools — such as Rice, Vanderbilt and Stanford — are all currently highly ranked in the national polls?
Their tuition costs are similar to that of USC, so is it not inherently flawed to say that USC’s baseball team is now suffering due to the costs that come from awarding partial scholarships at a private university when other similar institutions are not suffering the same fate?

Answer after the jump.

A: This is a common argument, but there are always nuances to making general statements. For example, when Stanford gives a partial scholarship, the athlete also receives any financial aid they are eligible for. USC would award a partial scholarship and count it against any financial aid. So where do you think a player would go between those two schools if he paid $10,000 more at USC?
Also, are Vanderbilt or Rice surrounded by Cal State Fullerton, Long Beach State, UCLA, UC Irvine, Pepperdine, LMU, UC Santa Barbara, UC Riverside, etc.
The biggest problem for private schools is they have a smaller pool of players because of the cost, so there is almost no margin of error. If you give a scholarship, the player has to perform because there won’t be other candidate to pick up the slack.