Often is a strong phrasing. Maybe true for an upper end guy like Frazier. Vast majority are paying an arm and a leg for a school they never would've even given a glance to if not for athletic opportunities.

Yep, they find very good academic scholarships for their athletes who are also actually good students -- a novel concept in today's world of college athletics. This is one very good thing about many DIII programs.

Perhaps a post for another day, but W-O-W... I did not realize this, at all.

Still works that way. Had a conversation with former head coach at Frostburg State on why they moved to DII college football from DIII. Simply said, him and the President decided they could not compete with Mount, as they had basically 125 scholarships, and they were only providing about 45. So at least moving to DII all schools would be playing by the same rules.

It depends on what kind of student you are. The guys that had academics as an afterthought are not going to do well getting financial aid but if you are a good student you are going to get significant financial aid either through academic scholarships or need based aid. My son is a good but not great student (3.5 gpa) and received a significant package that brought his $70K/yr price tag down to a reasonable amount. And athletics, at least at the schools to which he had applied, didn't play a factor in the offers. The initial offer he received was good but it still only brought the price down to a bit more than we wanted to spend so we filed an appeal. The coach told us specifically not to mention that he was an athlete in his appeal. But if you are a reasonably good student you are going to get something.

You are correct though about guys playing at schools they never would have looked at if it weren't for athletic opportunities. I had never heard of several of the schools that reached out to my son during the process and knew very little about most of them. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

It’s interesting that the coach told you not to mention in your scholarship appeal that your son was an athlete. I would guess that’s because the coach didn’t want you to think when your son got additional funds in his scholarship that it was, at least in part, because he was an athlete. Over the years I’ve heard multiple times that many D3 schools give athletes with good academic credentials scholarship aide over equally good students who are not also athletes, but that theses schools go to great lengths to hide the fact that they are operating in that manner.

YES, Marietta Baseball. My bad.

Thanks for thoughts from the parent perspective OUV. My eldest son is only a Freshman in HS right now but his talent level and love for baseball makes me guess I could end up in this situation in a few years. I don't mean to completely dismiss the D3 college athlete experience but I don't think there is enough discussion about some of the predatory tactics some of these schools use. I know 2 guys who went to Capital to play Football...there were over 50 football players in the freshmen class and it became clear they weren't ever really going to play once they got into things. They quit after 1 season but stayed at Capital and piled up insane college debt. None of it would've happened without the lure of the "college athlete" title.

Capital is not alone. I know a NAIA school that recently created a football program in order to make money. Increased enrollment of football players - many of whom drop out of the sport after freshman year, but stay enrolled -- means increased tuition collected over the next 3 years. The plan has worked exactly as planned for them.

One of my friends who is a DII basketball coach was telling me last fall about his pay bonus for x number of players on campus, (and program budget), and if they quit the team, but stay in school, they still get a bump in both areas.