MBB: Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference

[wilburt]

Doug I think endowments do help (or rather make a difference) when it comes to "need" based financial aid.  So as long as it is consistently awarded so as not to distinguish between athletes and regular students with a similar "need', then I think the NCAA shouldn't have a problem and nor do I.

[johnnyalexander]

With respect to the Trinity endowment conversation, I'd like to point out that while endowment money may be used for financial aid for students and student-athletes alike, it is also used to grow / update the school facilities, enhance technology systems, and most importantly pay for top level professors. Trinity, as I feel is the case with other SCAC schools, is an elite academic institution and one that has recently undergone construction in many areas around campus to upgrade their facilities as well as bring in new and talented professors. Having been a former SCAC player, I find it hard to believe that schools of the academic caliber of Trinity, Sewanee, Millsaps, etc. consistently offer "need based" money to students solely because they are athletes.

On a different note, Trinity looks to be making progress over the past couple of games!... hopefully this can carry over into SCAC play as they head into Hendrix and Austin College for the weekend. 

[scottiedoug]

Johnny, Wilburt, et al:
I did not mean to imply that Trunity or any other high endowment school does anything "wrong" and of course it costs money to run a first class college/university.  It is also true that different schools have different policies about the use of endowment funds for scholarships and about the use of grants, work-study, and loans.

My point was that unless one knows a lot about how achools do this, one is guessing a bit about the relationship between having money and having the students, including athletes,  whom you want.

I am still mad about SCAD!

[wilburt]

Doug, I know you didn't suggest that anything was "wrong" but in a nutshell those high endowment schools have a lot of options as to what to do with their endowment (ie scholarships and buildings).

[Borat...NOT]

In the past few years, Trinity has been raising tuition and giving less money to students.  About 5 years ago Trinity ended a program where they would guarantee any student who got in the finances to go to Trinity whether it was through grants or financial aid, they said if you can get in, we'll make sure you can pay for it.  This is no longer the case.  Trinity has also raised their academic standards over the past 5 years and is losing many athletes, especially football/basketball to schools like southwestern, UMHB, and TLU. 

An interesting tidbit of information, Trinity's President, John Brazil is one of the highest paid presidents in the country.  I've heard he might even be the third highest paid president in the country.  This may explain where all the endowment money is going.....

[evacuee]

Nearly every school increases tuition constantly.  What matters is where they stand relative to other schools that have similar structures. 

This is not to contest your claims, but do you have a source for what you're saying?  I'd like to read more about this.  I've heard similar statements from others, so I'm pretty sure you're right.  It is a shame, because when I was at Trinity, they offered a great product at a price that nearly undercut their competition.  I'm not sure if that is still the case or not. 

As far as the admission standards, that shouldn't hurt them in basketball.  Not as long as Williams and Amherst can be as good as they are. 

[scottiedoug]

It is interesting that different high quality schools are going in opposite directions about the issue of not letting finances keep an accepted student out.  As Trinity abandons a commitment to find the resources, Princeton has decided to make sure admitted students can afford to go there, with work and grants and not with loans.  The idea of course is not to load people with heavy debt when they are finished and to make sure kids who do not come from wealth can get top notch college education.   I think Amherst is doing the same.

[Borat...NOT]

If you are referring to sources about how much the president of Trinity gets paid, I was told that at a budget meeting for students while I was at Trinity.  This was 2 years ago so things could have changed but at that point he was one of the 5 highest paid professors at Trinity. 

I think the difference between Trinity and Amherst/Williams is that Trinity is only regionally known as a fine instituion while Amherst and Williams are nationally known.  Don't get me wrong, I think Trinity is a great school but it's only recently that people have begun to put it on par with schools like Amherst and Williams.  Trinity attracts the students in the south who want a top notch education while amherst attracts the students from around the country who want a first class education.  This gives them a bigger pool of students to choose from. 

[Josh Bowerman]

For the record, endowments ARE used to:

A)  Provide need and merit based academic aid to qualified and worthy students,

B)  Cover all or a portion of a full-time faculty or staff member's salary, or

C)  Provide an annual augmentation or offset to recurring specific budget lines or programmatic offerings at a college.

Endowments are NOT used to pay ongoing staff or faculty salaries, make current expenditures for capital equipment (unless a specific endowment was created for either of those purposes) or to build buildings.

It is also highly unlikely that any college president's salary, anywhere in the country, is covered solely by an institutional endowment.

[evacuee]

I disagree with Borat, especially when you're talking about a sport like basketball, and particularly among the top teams.  There is no doubt that those two schools are better known, but if you look at the Amherst roster, almost everyone is from the East Coast or Great Lakes area.  Williams is a little more spread out but not much.  Trinity's roster is just as diverse as either when you consider that Texas covers as much ground as a handful of East Coast states. 

But how many schools of Trinity's caliber are there in Texas?  Could you put Southwestern in there?  If you can, that's only two programs competing for all of the high achieving students in Texas who are not worthy of athletic scholarships.  The East Coast is absolutely loaded with small, top-notch d3 schools, which makes the competition brutal, particularly when Williams accepts only 19% of applicants.  Didn't Wittenberg win the National Title last year?  The NCAC is very competitive academically, and all the schools are within two to three hours of one another.  I think the bottom line is that the coaching staffs at the most successful schools do an absolutely incredible job and show that academic restrictions are no excuse for a lack of success at the D3 level. 

That said, it's not like has been very good recently and the people on campus should recognize that by attending some games.  I think in southern states where the winter weather is not so frightful, people just don't really care about basketball.  That is an advantage for east coast schools.  Kids are a lot more awestruck by the game atmosphere up north than in Texas. 

[evacuee]

Whoops.  The last paragraph should say, "...Trinity has been very good lately and..."

[Josh Bowerman]

From a liberal arts perspective, I'd put both Southwestern and Austin College in the same "academic quality" category as Trinity--though Trinity's endowment probably gives it a leg up in the "prestiege" category to the uninitiated.

Trinity offers some professional programs and engineering disciplines that classify it more as a comprehensive institution, whereas the other two focus only on undergraduate liberal arts education.

[FlightofthePetrel]

I just recently learned that Oglethorpe University alum and SCAC 3 point king Josh Burr made the roster of the Atlanta Vision and ABA team located north of Atlanta in Suwanee Georgia.  Burr made the team during the last set of tryouts held by the team.  Burr will dress in tomorrow night's game against the Tennessee Mud frogs.  Not really sure how the team is but the website shows they were ABA Division champs 2005-2006.  I just thought this was neat after learning about Bates playing on the Globetrotters traveling team.  It's good to see not only a D3 but also a SCAC player making a semi pro team.

[frank_ezelle]

Speaking of the Petrel's and their achievements, mention should be made of Andrew Tulowitsky and his record breaking shooting performance this week.  He scored 33 points against Piedmont in 37 minutes of play, making every shot that he took.  He was 11 for 11 from the field, including 7 3-pointers, and he hit all 4 of his free throws.  This beat the previous best 10 for 10 effort of Sewanee's Jonathan Jarrett in 2000.  Since Jarrett was a 6'10" pivot, I suspect that his shots didn't include quite so many 3's.

By the way, OU has scored 87 points or more in 6 of their 9 games this season.  It sound like the other teams in the SCAC better have their running shoes on and their 3-point defense in shape before they hit the court with Oglethorpe. 

[irion]

For the first time in 2 years Sewanee had all five starters on the court at the same time.  Sewanee 77  Depauw 70