It's National Signing Day in the US today - which means that the best high school players in America will choose what college they want to play for.
Scholarships: One and done?
In college football, players are taken in on a one-year revolving scholarship (that rule was changed in January 1973). That means that they go to university for free. That's a pretty good deal, if you think that the current college costs an average of $22,261 tuition-wise per year for a non-scholarship student in-state, and almost double that out-of-state. And if a player plays well for the team he's signed for, he becomes a god on the campus (which has it's, ahem, 'added rewards')... and perhaps the NFL afterwards. If he's good, or lucky. Or both.
But the opposite can happen. If a player doesn't make the team or looks as though he's not going to make the team for any other reason, the school can drop his scholarship and ask him to play football elsewhere. Despite players saying: "I can't wait to play all four years for the University of ----------," but the fact is this: "If you really underperform, you're probably going to be lucky to come back in your second or third year." And although a player might not be tired of the beautiful sights of a certain college - and hasn't come face-to-face with the law - a college coach can be tired of the player. He also might need you to leave. You see, in the world of college recruiting, teams are only allowed 85 total scholarships for their football teams. So a player can be pushed to the point that he voluntarily gives up his scholarship, and the coach then has a free scholarship to go after another wonderful high school player that might deliver his school the National Championship and another few hundred thousand dollars to his own pocket (think of a college coach like a company CEO - their interests are intertwined with the company's success).
The process of forcing players to 'voluntarily' give up their athletic scholarships or for coaches to use the end of an athletic scholarship as a proverbial stick with which to beat their players is hated by athletes. During the 2013 college football season some college football players - particularly those from Northwestern, a school just outside Chicago - wrote 'APU' on their wristbands, standing for 'All Players United'. It was the start of a movement which reached a head at the end of January, when Northwestern QB Kain Colter - backed by the United Steelworkers' Union - applied to the National Labor Relations Board to get the first college players' union recognised. The fight, Colter said, wasn't about pay, it was about having "a seat at the table", arguing that players ought to be given four-year scholarships, not one year. "The current model resembles a dictatorship" was used and that the scholarships the players get cover the full cost of attendance, instead of a small stipend.
The players' point about athletic scholarships seems to be backed up by former NCAA Compliance Officer Rick Allen, who wrote in his blog 'The Informed Athlete': "While some people believe that college athletes who receive athletic scholarships receive 'full-ride' scholarships, the truth is that no athletic scholarship covers ALL of the costs of attending college... A 'full' athletic scholarship covers the following costs of college: tuition, certain course-related fees, room and board, and the value or provision of books. An athletic scholarship may not cover all student fees, and also may not cover things like parking fines, a single room in the dorm, library fines or late fees."
And if a player gets injured and that
