re: How much monthly allowance does a student athlete receive?

I played D1 baseball which has to split 11.7 scholarships among the 35-40 guys on the roster, so it's a bit different than football, but in a nutshell, we didn't get shite.

I got books and part of my tuition paid for through my baseball scholarship, then was on a $4K per year academic scholarship (32 ACT score) that covered most of my room, but our coach wanted everyone to live on campus and the on-campus apartments were $2600 per semester (re-damn-diculous). I had a student loan each semester to cover meals, the rest of my room expenses, and then an overage for my walking around money. So even after being on both athletic and academic scholarship, I walked out of college over $20K in student loan debt that I'm still paying off at the age of 29.

As far as meals were concerned, we only got them provided on game days and travel days. It was typically a Ryan's/Barnhill's/Golden Corral buffet twice per day and either Little Caesar's, Domino's, or some sub sandwich place as the third meal. Every now and then, we would get $20 or so to go to dinner on our own.

It always seemed like a huge crock of shite to me that the starters and all-conference guys in baseball got less in scholarship money than the 4th string tight end who never saw the field in his career, but since baseball is not a "revenue generating" sport, it was what it was.

Would I do it again? Not sure. Part of me says I would gladly because it was a good experience overall, but part of me would have just been a frat guy and worked part time to cover my expenses. I'd have come out of it financially in a better place, or worst case, same spot.

Off the soapbox now.