re: Mississippi Governor Tweets about Vanderbilt's Advantages

Vandy's opportunity fund is a joke designed to gain a competitive advantage and will be exploited for years to come. vandy is going to be in omaha constantly because of this....its patently unfair.

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Vandy's opportunity fund is a joke designed to gain a competitive advantage

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Wait, do you really think that OV was created for baseball?

Listen, OV is an advantage but its not what people say. This was my post from another thread.

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There seems to be a gross misunderstanding as to the rules and, specifically, the magnitude in which the rules actually benefit Vanderbilt. The idea that they have "unlimited scholarships" is just factually incorrect.

What the rules do: Although equivalence scholarships can be split out amongst athletes to get to the 11.7, if any of your financial aid is for athletics, than all of your financial aid is counted towards the scholarship limit. If its all non-sports financial aid, none of it counts.

Where Opportunity Vanderbilt comes into play: OV was created in 2008, but not to cater to the rule change from 2007, it was to help aid students post the 2008-GFC. Since Vanderbilt is so expensive for any residency (~$80k) they adjust the available financial aid for everyone that gets in based on what the family can pay to give. Here's the last data piece I've found on the subject. All Ivy League schools do that in some way if you meet certain criteria. The biggest portion of the OV awards are paid for students in the $80-$100k and $100-120k range, which considering the socioeconomic background of many baseball parents, is likely in line with the median family level here.

So let's do the math: Vandy total cost of enrollment a year is ~$80k (I'm assuming all expenses included for the rest of this). The average award given for the income bracket I mentioned is ~$45k, but since endowments by law have to disperse at least 5% per year and the asset classes they're invested in (heavily absolute return and private equity) have performance much better since 2016, let's just for the sake of argument say that they've been able to increase that figure by 15%, so ~$52k.

Post OV, cost of attendance is now ~$28k. There are also various types of other scholarships like HOPE scholarships in Tennessee and NRTA for Arkansas, but for the sake of argument we'll ignore those and just focus on OV.

Arkanasas cost of enrollment is ~$27k for residents and ~$44k for non-residents. If we're just looking at baseball, what OV does is effectively put Vandy on the same level as in-state residents without baseball scholarships, but puts Arkansas at a disadvantage for out-of-state scholarships. We would effectively have to use 0.4 scholarships to get the out-of-state students onto the same line as post-OV Vandy or in-state kids. Some of that is helped by the NRTA stuff that Arkansas does for surrounding states (although the GPA stuff is just as tough as OV).

My point is: It is an advantage for sure, not the "leveling the playing field" that a lot of Vandy fans will sometimes claim. However, its not egregious "unlimited scholarships" that non-Vandy people claim. It puts national recruiting schools like Arkansas that don't have a huge swath of in-state talent at a relative disadvantage to Vandy for families that don't have excessive resources, but its not nearly as bad as many would want you to think.

Also note that all of the above assumes that any baseball player can meet the academic requirements for OV, which if they don't, they have to use baseball scholarships. If said baseball player is not from a great economic situation, it would require 0.45 of a scholarship to get to the cost of enrollment for an out-of-state kid with no scholarship to Arkansas, or ~0.66 to get to instate.

PS: I know someone is going to think "well they can just skirt the rules by helping all players that can maximize the OV payout, regardless if they meet the academic requirements". Do any of you really think that anybody is going to try and push that after the recent college admissions scandal?

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Although equivalence scholarships can be split out amongst athletes to get to the 11.7, if any of your financial aid is for athletics, than all of your financial aid is counted towards the scholarship limit. If its all non-sports financial aid, none of it counts.

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I'm pretty sure that rule was changed a couple of years ago, and stacking is now allowed.

Sounds like Vandy needs to join the Ivy League

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I'm pretty sure that rule was changed a couple of years ago, and stacking is now allowed.

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So that post was based on the rules from when OV came about, but also complete "stacking" isn't allowed from my understanding. There are minumum thresholds on each portion (beleive 25% to use baseball). Which still doesn't fit the full bill of admission. At the end of the day, attending Vandy is expensive. So even every tertiary help is going to be proportionally less advantageous.

The ump's not even near the plate! Some of the poorest home plate umpiring I've seen was in this CWS.

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Vandy's opportunity fund is a joke designed to gain a competitive advantage

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No it's not, jackass. It's designed to make sure a Vandy education is attainable to those who merit it. There was no thought to sports when that was enacted.

I had three kids go to Vandy, and I can tell you that aside from the friggin whistler, no one at Vandy gives a crap about the sports.

When Vandy football was 4-0 and playing a top 10 Auburn team, I was at the game (it was parents' weekend). They beat Auburn in an exciting finish, and at one point the season ticket holders around me almost stood up. That's how crazy they are.