The Holy Land of Hoops

Some of my previous posts on FCOA have elicited responses indicating that several posters do not believe that COA will be an advantage in recruiting. NCAA Div 1 basketball coaches apparently think it will in fact be an advantage and very much a disadvantage to those not paying COA.

FCOA WILL BE A FACTOR IN RECRUITING BASKETBALL PLAYERS PER NCAA HEAD COACHES

Quotes from an article from Andy Katz based upon a survey of 136 head basketball coaches in Division 1
"For those schools that don't implement a plan to do cost of attendance, but compete in a conference where other schools are giving it, it will be almost impossible to keep up and expect to be competitive over the long term,'' a coach from a non-Power 5 conference said.
"I do believe it will have an effect when you are recruiting against schools that don't pay because it will speak to their level of commitment and coaches will use that against them,'' said another coach from a non-Power Five conference.
One coach from a non-Power 5 conference said it could be the reason why a recruit picks a school.
"COA could be a deciding factor for kids, especially those who come from low-income areas," the coach said. "A lot of the time, we'll recruit kids that have a single mom who's working two jobs. So it's certainly something that could help us when recruiting those student-athletes.''
A dozen schools -- including the Pac-12's Oregon State -- are undecided for the upcoming year. Oregon State said if the COA is issued, then it would be $2,700 per player.
A coach in the undecided group said, "We are still deciding if we will be using cost of attendance or not. Our allotment could be as much as $3,000 per player. It's a huge recruiting advantage. If our school decides not to do it, we will need to be very creative in our recruiting. It could even affect our style of play.''
I firmly believe that the COA WILL be a significant impact on recruiting. Those schools who do not offer it will do so at their own very significant risk.
My only question is will a school which only offers $1400 per year (Boston College) be at a huge disadvantage to a school like FIU (C-USA) or U.Cincinnati (AAC) which offer $6000 and $7434 respectively? And how much of a disadvantage will they suffer.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketb ... -advantage

Hopefully all of our schools will in fact pay the FCOA. I have been unable to find exact numbers however. Does anyone know if the conference has released that information? Thanks

By the way I am not suggesting that none of our schools have released FCOA numbers. I am proud to say that XU has done so and will pay $2300.00. I see in this article that Butler will pay $2500.00, Nova will pay $2460.00 and Creighton will pay $3648 but NONE of the others have released amounts to my knowledge. If I am wrong and I hope I am please list the amounts.

No numbers, but the conference has voted to require all members to pay FCOA for basketball. No one has said FCOA isn't an advantage, just that it is probably not a big deal that we aren't releasing our numbers. The recruits will know what we are offering.

And also this only speaks of offering a FCOA or not offering one. Says nothing about whether the amount matters.

hoyahooligan wrote:And also this only speaks of offering a FCOA or not offering one. Says nothing about whether the amount matters.

Hoya, How do you interpret the following statements from the article:

ESPN survey: Coaches believe differing COA payments will impact recruiting

The additional money men's basketball players will receive due to the newly NCAA-allowed cost of attendance will be a recruiting advantage as recruits begin to understand the wide range of money they could receive from different schools, according to more than 70 percent of the Division I men's basketball coaches who responded to an ESPN survey in August.

marquette wrote:No numbers, but the conference has voted to require all members to pay FCOA for basketball. No one has said FCOA isn't an advantage, just that it is probably not a big deal that we aren't releasing our numbers. The recruits will know what we are offering.

But couldn't one surmise because one isn't releasing the number that it's on the lower side of things? If you were on the higher side of things, wouldn't you want to be saying that loud and proud?

We are getting more tv money than any other basketball conference or G5 football conference. We have large sponsorship deals because of our name recognition and our games being on tv. We have the best average attendance outside of the P5, better attendance than the PAC12, and are within 300 average of the Big 12. We have plenty of money to pay FCOA and have proven our commitment to being the best basketball conference in the country. I am absolutely certain that our FCOA is highly competitive.

marquette wrote:We are getting more tv money than any other basketball conference or G5 football conference. We have large sponsorship deals because of our name recognition and our games being on tv. We have the best average attendance outside of the P5, better attendance than the PAC12, and are within 300 average of the Big 12. We have plenty of money to pay FCOA and have proven our commitment to being the best basketball conference in the country. I am absolutely certain that our FCOA is highly competitive.

Marquette, I hope your opinion is correct and at least in the case of XU I think it will be. We have always done more with less and I expect that to continue. We will continue to get a bid to the dance almost every year in my opinion. However we will lose some good players because our COA which is $2300 is much less than Cincinnati's COA which is (per their AD in an Enquirer interview) $7434 which is supposedly the highest in the nation. But this largely is due to the fact that we have a superior coach. I am not denying there are other factors involved however not every player is interested in the quality of his education or the better chance he may have to graduate from X than from UC. Indeed many seem to care little about education and much about the pro draft. Unfortunately they seem to be the best players in many cases. Will low COA's mean the demise of the Big East? Of course not nor will it mean we don't get some good players. The question is how many. By the way, and please tell me in all honesty do you consider $2300 to be "highly competitive" to use your words with $7434?
Especially for a high school kid who lives in an impoverished area and has only one parent who is on welfare. Of course that does not describe all and perhaps not most of our recruits but it does describe many. I hope for the best and at least in the Muskies case believe we will maintain a good program. I hope that is the case at Marquette as well. Don't minimize the influence of a few thousand dollars per year on an 18 year old.

Who's minimizing? I'm saying we have no official numbers but that's not necessarily cause for concern. If that is in fact XU's stipend amount I would be very surprised. It is my understanding that it is supposed to be largely based on the cost of living beyond tuition/books for a university. Since UC and XU are in the same city I would expect their cost of living to be similar when the final numbers come out.

marquette wrote:Who's minimizing? I'm saying we have no official numbers but that's not necessarily cause for concern. If that is in fact XU's stipend amount I would be very surprised. It is my understanding that it is supposed to be largely based on the cost of living beyond tuition/books for a university. Since UC and XU are in the same city I would expect their cost of living to be similar when the final numbers come out.

The COA number for X is $2300 from our AD on a radio report and from our head coach in the list at the bottom of the Andy Katz article which was compiled from the survey ESPN did of 136 head coaches.

Other Big East schools reported thusly:
Butler $2500
Villanova $2460
Creighton $3846
NO OTHER BE SCHOOLS HAVE RELEASED THEIR COA TO MY KNOWLEDGE. Please correct me if I am wrong.

robinreed wrote:

hoyahooligan wrote:And also this only speaks of offering a FCOA or not offering one. Says nothing about whether the amount matters.

Hoya, How do you interpret the following statements from the article:

ESPN survey: Coaches believe differing COA payments will impact recruiting

The additional money men's basketball players will receive due to the newly NCAA-allowed cost of attendance will be a recruiting advantage as recruits begin to understand the wide range of money they could receive from different schools, according to more than 70 percent of the Division I men's basketball coaches who responded to an ESPN survey in August.

I interpret it as the fact that I didn't read the article just the excerpts you provided in your first post.

Is there any oversight at all for FCOA? There's no way it costs this much of a differing amount between schools.