NCAA Baseball Scholarship Concerns for Incoming Freshmen

The July 1st deadline for NCAA Division I and II schools to notify scholarship student-athletes of the status of their athletic scholarship for the 2020-21 academic year has passed.

However, there are still some scholarship issues that can impact athletes – In this particular case, incoming baseball recruits.

On a recent baseball forum that I follow, there was a report of a coach who has reportedly asked multiple recruits to “release themselves” from their National Letter of Intent that they had signed with that program. Reasons that the coach cited for this request included:

• The number of seniors who are returning for another season of eligibility

• The number of juniors who would have likely been drafted this year but for the MLB draft being shortened to just 5 rounds.

As you can imagine, this puts these baseball athletes in a very difficult position.

(A similar situation could possibly happen in any sport, but it happens most often in baseball.)

An athlete in that situation could tell the coach that he intends to enroll at the university, work his tail off and receive the scholarship that he signed for.

As long as an athlete satisfies all of the university’s admission requirements and the NCAA requirements to be a Qualifier, the university would be required to honor that scholarship.

However, doing that places the athlete in a very awkward position.

He would already be starting off at a disadvantage by joining the team of a head coach and staff who expressly told him that they didn’t want him there on scholarship.

On the other hand, does this athlete have a realistic chance of finding another team to join and another university that will permit him to enroll at this late date?

If you have or know an athlete who is in a similar situation, let them know about our confidential Scholarship Strategies Consult, or have them contact us by calling 913-766-1235 or by sending an email to rick@informedathlete.com