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.