Spurrier Unhappy with New Scholarship Reform

Twitter: @RobABCColumbia COLUMBIA, S.C. (WOLO) — The NCAA is making some sweeping changes to college athletics which will effect future recruiting practices for colleges such as South Carolina and Clemson. The Division I board of directors will give conferences the option of adding $2,000 in spending money as part of athletic scholarships, and schools will also be able to decide whether to award scholarships for multiple years. Currently, scholarships include money only for tuition, room and board, books and fees, and are awarded on an annual basis. The $2,000 in spending money will go to both men and woman athletes. Rules involving Title IX a big reason why bigger revenue sport athletes will not receive larger compensation. However, South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier disagrees. “They’re still slighting football and basketball players, they’re the guys that bring in all the dough,” said Spurrier. “That’s just my opinion. (The NCAA) won’t agree with me, the guys that bring in the most should get a little bit more. But, it probably won’t happen that way.” Other stipulations of the reform include athletes will get multi-year scholarships. The current structure has athletes receiving scholarships on a year-to-year renewal type basis. “I don’t agree with that at all either,” Spurrier said. “Makes you more careful to sign players.” The board also agreed to start banning schools from postseason play if they don’t meet benchmarks on the annual Academic Progress Rate report. The first bans wouldn’t begin until 2012-13 and would be phased in over four years. Conferences will vote on whether or not to adopt the new reform. BCS conferences are most likely to accept, while it is still uncertain how smaller conferences that make less money will react. – The Associated Press contributed to this story