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66 GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED arship athletes will get checks twice a year, while partial scholarship ath- letes will have the amount deducted from their outstanding balance. But any amount is welcome, ath- letes said. "(Last) fall, I came back strapped, had no money whatsoever because I spent it all going home, and they told me I couldn't work, so I couldn't earn any money," said men's bas- ketball sophomore Isaac Haas, who is from Alabama. "I feel like if you have that extra money on hand, that really revives you and allows you to be more responsible with your mon- ey and it really teaches you as a col- legiate student and athlete how to be responsible with the things given to you. "It definitely helps a lot with being able to relax. A lot of times people run away with the money and they do things they probably shouldn't. But the people who are responsible and who are serious about a career, they can really use that to live com- fortably and take care of business that you would normally have to worry about. Now you can have that extra money to run across the street and grab something, you can stock your fridge and make yourself some- thing healthy to eat. And you get some luxury out of it. I'm not going to lie about that — you can go out and see movies more and stuff like that." Matt Painter and Darrell Ha- zell, coaches of Purdue's flagship programs, said they like that their athletes will have the ability to off- set travels costs and expenses with money beyond their scholarships. But Hazell already is looking into how to help his football players han- dle the influx of cash. "We have to do some education for them," Hazell said. "They have a chance to leave here not only now debt-free but also with a little mon- ey in their pocket if they do it the right way. That's why we're going to bring people in from the outside to help educate about how to save your money and do things with your mon- ey." There's a potential problem with the stipend, though: Cost of atten- dance is not the same from school to school. Each financial aid department budgets differently, and the compo- nents in devising cost of attendance can vary. How many visits home per year are included? Is bus transpor- tation free on campus or is there a fee? Do schools supply laptops? What's the cost of the living in the area? Cost of attendance is one deter- mining factor in financial aid eli- gibility, and it's a crucial figure be- cause student aid, including loans, may never exceed a student's cost of attendance. Still, with athletics now involved in a way, there will be an assump- tion that some coaches of big-time programs will try to influence those numbers. What if, for example, an SEC pro- gram wants to boost the figure to tout its higher gap payment than a school it's recruiting against? Burke understands the senti- ment and said there was a bylaw in the last convention that was going to be voted on that would have told schools they had to submit the data so everyone could see their outliers. It got rejected by the membership. "I wouldn't be surprised if people think there are shenanigans go- ing on (and) to see that resurface again," Burke said. "But should a school do that, you run the risk of losing your federal funding if you're playing games and the (U.S.) De- partment of Education comes in and does an audit. The reality is, the fi- nancial aid officers have had to build those budgets, and those budgets have to withstand federal scrutiny if they come in. "Why would a university want to have a higher cost of attendance in this day and age? With affordability being such a big issue, I think you go down the wrong path if you try to do that. "They shouldn't be doing this (solely) on the basis of trying to help athletics. If I were a university pres- ident, given the pressures they're under, because we're such a small fraction of this big budget, if you did anything that would risk your certi- fication, your status of giving federal funds, you're not going to risk that." Their is a risk, however, that the prospective student-athletes will consider the financial discrepancies between schools during the recruit- ing process. Even if coaches don't have to pow- er to influence cost of attendance, they certainly can try to use those figures in recruiting. Say Rutgers can offer $4,000 to another school's $3,000. Wouldn't those coaches tout that? Would that be enough to push the recruit to- ward one school, potentially creating a competitive advantage?