Virginia Tech Has Abandoned the Idea of Fining Players Cost-of-Attendance Funds

Virginia Tech athletic director Whit Babcock has informed the Associated Press that football players won’t have their cost-of-attendance stipends fined. The notion, which was floated by defensive coordinator Bud Foster on Wednesday, was terrible while it lasted.

New NCAA rules afford a stipend of a few thousand dollars to student-athletes to cover expenses beyond tuition and room and board. Foster told reporters the Hokies would explore the idea of disciplining players by fining these funds.

Predictably, it did not go over well.

A coach wanting to mold players into responsible young men is noble. The only problem with trying to bring real-world principles into big-time college football is that it exists in a completely different biosphere than the rest of the real world. Football players, especially at a program like Virginia Tech, would be compensated more fairly for their services if the NCAA played by the outside world’s rules.

Yesterday’s short-lived proposal was not without precedent. In 2006, Hokie players had their bowl stipend fined for committing personal and unsportsmanlike fouls.

"“You just can’t retaliate,” [coach Frank] Beamer said at the time. “You go back in the huddle and let’s play football. We know better and (personal fouls) aren’t going to happen. I think that’s another $100 and another Wednesday morning.”"

Virginia Tech can look at yesterday’s events in two ways. They can see it as a public relations debacle and walk around with egg-soaked faces. The glass-half-full way to view it, however, is to be thankful the proposal died quickly. Not sure we’ve seen a more clearly labeled bottle of recruiting poison with the bottle off ready to be used.

[Associated Press]