Brilliant Idea of the Day Goes To...

[sovereignstar v2]

lvpops53, who shared this excellent idea via the reader comments at StarTribune.com. He/she wrote this in response to an article about how students voted in favor to raise student fees to help save athletic programs at their Div II school, football in particular.

Football saved by St. Cloud students | StarTribune.com

College sports has gotten out of hand. I'm glad to see the football program saved at SCSU as I went there in the 70's. But on the other hand I'm willing to bet that money from the general fund has found it's way into the athletic dept. But everything from scholarships to equipment to all the travel has gotten to be too much. One way to help out with the scholarship situation is to limit EVERY program in the country to the number of scholarships to the number of players that are actually playing. In football, 22. Basketball, 5 and so on. This would help EVERY program in the country to help balance the budget in athletic dept's.

BRILLIANT!

[King of New York]

I don't think that there's a basketball program in the country that only "plays" five players, or a football program that only "plays" twenty-two players, so I am not sure that I follow the logic of making the number of scholarships equivalent to the number of starters.

The solution that schools adopt during the next couple of years might be even more drastic. If the economy has not recovered substantially before the federal stimulus money runs out, then we will likely see quite a few second- and third-tier schools dropping all their athletic programs down to Division III and getting rid of athletic scholarships; I also expect that a lot of conferences will reorganize and become more geographically compact in order to cut down on travel expenses.