We should easily be able to fund full scholarships for the whole baseball team...

[MedDawg]

35 scholarships x $20,000 per year tuition/room/board = only $700,000 per year. (11.7 of those are already covered)

Our endowment is now nearly $500 million, I imagine we should be able to fund full 'academic' scholarships for the whole baseball team if we really wanted to.

We could (find a way to legally) create a new scholarship fund with 51% regular students 49% baseball players and get alums to donate for it. How much would we need to create the scholarship? Is the principal left alone like the endowment?

Think about how much our athletic revenues have grown and how much State has spent on athletic facilities over the past 10 years.

$700,000 per year is only 0.7% of our annual athletic revenues. Over the past 10 years we have spent/are spending:

$72 million on Davis Wade expansion
$55 million on Dudy Noble Field
$25 million on football facility
$11 million on basketball practice facility

We should be able to afford to fund full scholarships for the whole baseball team and should not use that as an excuse for recruiting or getting a new coach.



Edit to add: I KNOW the NCAA limits baseball athletic scholarships to 11.7. I'm talking about in addition, through academic scholarships, etc. (I thought that was obvious).

Everyone talks about Vandy using their 4 billion dollar endowment to fill out baseball scholarships with academic scholarships and giving them an advantage in recruiting. I know we don't have a 4 billion dollar endowment and we also can't just set aside money for baseball players. But since it would only take at most $700k/year (at MSU), our $500 million endowment and $50-100 million in athletic donations over 10 years should be enough to do what Vandy does for their baseball players.

[Liverpooldawg]

35 scholarships x $20,000 per year tuition/room/board = only $700,000 per year. (11.7 of those are already covered)

Our endowment is now nearly $500 million, I imagine we should be able to fund full 'academic' scholarships for the whole baseball team if we really wanted to.

We could (find a way to legally) create a new scholarship fund with 51% regular students 49% baseball players and get alums to donate for it. How much would we need to create the scholarship? Is the principal left alone like the endowment?

Think about how much our athletic revenues have grown and how much State has spent on athletic facilities over the past 10 years.

$700,000 per year is only 0.7% of our annual athletic revenues. Over the past 10 years we have spent/are spending:

$72 million on Davis Wade expansion
$55 million on Dudy Noble Field
$25 million on football facility
$11 million on basketball practice facility

We should be able to afford to fund full scholarships for the whole baseball team and should not use that as an excuse for recruiting or getting a new coach.

The NCAA does not allow more.

[yjnkdawg]

35 scholarships x $20,000 per year tuition/room/board = only $700,000 per year. (11.7 of those are already covered)

Our endowment is now nearly $500 million, I imagine we should be able to fund full 'academic' scholarships for the whole baseball team if we really wanted to.

We could (find a way to legally) create a new scholarship fund with 51% regular students 49% baseball players and get alums to donate for it. How much would we need to create the scholarship? Is the principal left alone like the endowment?

Think about how much our athletic revenues have grown and how much State has spent on athletic facilities over the past 10 years.

$700,000 per year is only 0.7% of our annual athletic revenues. Over the past 10 years we have spent/are spending:

$72 million on Davis Wade expansion
$55 million on Dudy Noble Field
$25 million on football facility
$11 million on basketball practice facility

We should be able to afford to fund full scholarships for the whole baseball team and should not use that as an excuse for recruiting or getting a new coach.

If it were that easy to do , I imagine it would have been done when Polk was our coach. The key is the 11.7 you mentioned. The max the NCAA allows. That is why baseball programs have to fund partial scholarships and hope for a player being on a scholastic scholarship when possible.

[Todd4State]

The key is it has to be the "same standards" as regular students. So, we should give them leadership scholarships based on the windfall. We can do it on a case by case basis- waiving out of state tuition if a player qualifies and etc.

[RocketDawg]

The key is it has to be the "same standards" as regular students. So, we should give them leadership scholarships based on the windfall. We can do it on a case by case basis- waiving out of state tuition if a player qualifies and etc.

Disagree. I don't have a problem with them getting academic scholarships if they qualify. But they shouldn't be treated special just because they play baseball. Remember ... we are first and foremost an academic institution.

[Todd4State]

Disagree. I don't have a problem with them getting academic scholarships if they qualify. But they shouldn't be treated special just because they play baseball. Remember ... we are first and foremost an academic institution.

That's true. But most of our baseball players come in with GPA's of 3.0 or much higher in many instances. Plus, I would say being a likely captain on a baseball team while excelling at the sport would qualify as being a solid leader. At least IMO.

And what I just said is probably very minimal of what they do off the field in high school- I'm sure most play other sports, are active in their church and FCA.

[Mimi's Babies]

Disagree. I don't have a problem with them getting academic scholarships if they qualify. But they shouldn't be treated special just because they play baseball. Remember ... we are first and foremost an academic institution.

Most of our baseball players are very sharp. An ACT 27/28 is a full ride scholarship., Would be Interested to know how many players are full ride academic scholarships are playing this year.

[Leeshouldveflanked]

This is why JC baseball is pretty strong in MIssissippi.... some of the marginal D1 guys are going JC because they will get a full ride compared to taking a chance on getting cut from 35 man roster and not getting any $....

[5049]

This is why JC baseball is pretty strong in MIssissippi.... some of the marginal D1 guys are going JC because they will get a full ride compared to taking a chance on getting cut from 35 man roster and not getting any $....

This is also why we should be using the JUCO system more.

Tanner Poole, Cole Marsh, Spencer Price off this team alone. Ryan Rigby, Trey Jolly, Luke Reynolds from the last few.

[Todd4State]

This is also why we should be using the JUCO system more.

Tanner Poole, Cole Marsh, Spencer Price off this team alone. Ryan Rigby, Trey Jolly, Luke Reynolds from the last few.

Poole- Role player for us who many of our fans constantly complain about.
Marsh- Middle relief/midweek starter type who has been suspended once already this year.
Price- Good closer. You can find good role player types like this in JUCO. Not really a MLB prospect though.
Rigby- Sidearm guy. Another good type of player you can find in JUCO. At West Alabama now and not really a MLB prospect.
Jolly- Not on the team anymore
Reynolds- Not on the team anymore either. Even most of those that think he should have been kept on the team understand it would have been in a reserve role and on the roster he was somewhere between player 33-38 out of 35 and may not have been on the SEC roster.

You can find some good role type players in MS JUCO. Which we do need. But we can't make a living off of it and expect to win National Titles.

You can say that USM's JUCO guys kicked our ass. But I think we all would agree that there were some obvious extenuating circumstances and none of them were in our favor. One of those was the fact that we started four freshmen in the field against a veteran team. By the time those freshmen are juniors they are going to be much better than the players that USM has.

We should follow the formula that Florida, LSU, and Vanderbilt have. Because we realistically can and it's a proven formula in Omaha.

[5049]

We should follow the formula that Florida, LSU, and Vanderbilt have. Because we realistically can and it's a proven formula in Omaha.

I agree it?s a good formula for those schools but we are not them. I disagree that it?s a good formula for us. We can?t offer the extra money.

As for the JUCOs, I did not list them to talk about each one specifically. The point is that it is a pot of talented players right under our nose within our state borders

[Todd4State]

I agree it?s a good formula for those schools but we are not them. I disagree that it?s a good formula for us. We can?t offer the extra money.

As for the JUCOs, I did not list them to talk about each one specifically. The point is that it is a pot of talented players right under our nose within our state borders

We do offer extra money- it's just that Ron Polk conditioned many of our fans into thinking that we couldn't. We've been doing it for years. We just use it in the form of scholarship money and grants and waivers depending on the player.

The money issue is incredibly overrated. I always laugh at people that come to the conclusion that guys that go to school and intend to leave after three years without a degree to play a sport are somehow at the same time enamored with Vanderbilt education. The reason they are going to Vanderbilt is because their coaches have shown that they can get them to MLB- that's really all they want to do. They had a pitching coach named Derek Johnson who is now the Brewers pitching coach who started everything for them. Now they have another elite pitching coach in Scott Brown who has shown that he can get players to MLB.

We absolutely can recruit like them- Cann was well on his way to doing that. We are probably going to hire someone else that uses that same formula. The problem has been that we've been doing what you suggested- go after a ton of JUCO's- and it has caused us to be fairly unstable- terrible 2015, win the SEC in 2016. What Cohen did was essentially the same thing Jackie did with JUCO's.

I didn't list those players to run them down- just to illustrate what the Mississippi JUCO leagues produce because those guys that you listed were some of the better players in that league. A team of mostly MS JUCO players is going to get us a USM/La Tech level squad but in the SEC which would translate to middle of the league at best with a team like what USM has now and what La Tech has had recently.

We already get the best in Mississippi out of the high school ranks- and we develop them into quality SEC players more times than not. Look at the list of players that we have had that have gone to MLB recently:

P- Graveman, Holder, Girodo, Lindgren, Stratton, Hudson will likely be up this year and was a first round pick, Pilkington will likely be a first round pick this year, Easley, Moreland, Tyler Moore, Adam Frazier, Hunter Renfroe, Rooker was a first round pick and may make it up this year, Woodruff, and Jake Mangum is a consensus top 100 prospect.

Out of that group- ONE MS JUCO player and actually only ONE overall that we've recently sent to MLB and that's Tyler Moore. If I remember correctly he went to Meridian because of grades and was a Dandy Dozen player so he was hardly in the class of players you listed. Every other player that I listed regardless of what state they were from came to MSU directly from high school. And that includes some guys that have some impressive accolades- Johnny Bench winners, SEC Triple Crown winners, All-Americans, and several first round picks.

[Cooterpoot]

This is also why we should be using the JUCO system more.

Tanner Poole, Cole Marsh, Spencer Price off this team alone. Ryan Rigby, Trey Jolly, Luke Reynolds from the last few.

Anybody that thinks jucos are the way to go are fools. Juco ball is weak from a talent perspective. We?ve tried it before and it failed. You can take a couple a year to fill holes from the draft but that?s about it.

[Todd4State]

This is why JC baseball is pretty strong in MIssissippi.... some of the marginal D1 guys are going JC because they will get a full ride compared to taking a chance on getting cut from 35 man roster and not getting any $....

Eh....nationally.....it's not that strong. And if anything it's watered down. The "marginal" guys you are talking about are going JUCO because it's their best option at that point. We're not losing players to Hinds and Jones.

If you have a legit minimum SEC offer- from MSU or Ole Miss- players are going to take that any and every day over a JUCO offer. It's because it's a statistically better path to the pros. Which is the ultimate goal- get to MLB- not see who can get the biggest scholarship offer.

The thing about JUCO is there is a lot of risk if you actually have a MSU or Ole Miss offer because if you take the JUCO offer there is no guarantee that you will get a SEC offer after JUCO. And you could end up at Belhaven.

The guys that get cut from the 35 man roster are always walk-ons. If you cut a scholarship player you have to play with 34 guys. Just adding that to the conversation.

Some of the guys that are legit prospects are going JUCO because they want to try to get drafted in the top 10-15 so that they can go pro and don't have any real intention of playing in the SEC or anywhere else that's not pro. Like former MSU commit Pearson McMahan. He was drafted in the 19th round and then returned to JUCO and got drafted in the 4th round. There aren't really very many of those types of players and they are a waste of time for MSU to go after because they are going to go pro. The problem is those are the types of JUCO players you need to make an impact on the national stage but again, they rarely go to the SEC or any other college baseball program.

[AROB44]

The way to do it would be through the Bulldog Club. Endow a scholarship for baseball. It can be done....I did it.

[Todd4State]

The way to do it would be through the Bulldog Club. Endow a scholarship for baseball. It can be done....I did it.

If this is true, I wonder why more people don't? I'm just saying after all these years and as much as our fans follow baseball I would have thought that this would have been brought up at some point.

[Homedawg]

If this is true, I wonder why more people don't? I'm just saying after all these years and as much as our fans follow baseball I would have thought that this would have been brought up at some point.

In not sure what he's talking about. But you can't legally give money just set to go to a baseball player.

[AusTexDawg]

The way to do it would be through the Bulldog Club. Endow a scholarship for baseball. It can be done....I did it.

If this is true, I wonder why more people don't? I'm just saying after all these years and as much as our fans follow baseball I would have thought that this would have been brought up at some point.

Is the goal of such a Bulldog Club scholarship just to free up more operating revenue for the baseball team? That would make sense, and it seems like baseball fans could do that, like Todd suggests. Lots of private schools have endowed athletic scholarships. I remember hearing a few years ago that Stanford wanted to fully endow all of their athletic scholarships (not sure if they reached that goal).

When I read the original quote above, it seemed like the thought was that a Bulldog Club scholarship for baseball could get around the 11.7 and/or minimum 25% rules. Until the rules are changed or Mississippi State receives some windfall that allows the school to offer academic or leadership scholarships to all students who are at whatever minimum level so a lot of baseball players could also qualify, how would an endowed scholarship increase our competitiveness, aside from freeing up some money to pay quality coaches or (legitimately) support recruiting efforts?

[shannondawg]

The way to do it would be through the Bulldog Club. Endow a scholarship for baseball. It can be done....I did it.

Tell us more, is that to help with the 11.7 or is it for an additional scholarship and can you pick which player?

[ScoobaDawg]

Tell us more, is that to help with the 11.7 or is it for an additional scholarship and can you pick which player?

Doing anything through the BC would only be funding the 11.7.
As explained the only way you can give the baseball players more is to give ALL STUDENTS more. If you tried to give more to the baseball players specifically that would be against NCAA rules. The NCAA limit is 11.7 and you can't skirt that.