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.
Keep in mind that SC has in the past recruited some of the "cream of the crop" that signed with MLB. Therefore, maybe a 4-Star player SC didn't sign, went to Stanford, while the 5-Star SC recruited, signed a major league contract. Now SC has to go to a 3-Star player or whatever is left.
What would you expect them to say? We have a crappy coach? This is a bit like Notre Dame being down in football. The Domers claim that it is not the Coaches (and their football ills go back well before Weis's arrival) fault, it's our academic standards!
this is a test
Seriously Wolf, there are 11 year old girls with better functioning blogs. Tell your internet guys to stop "fixing" it.