HONOLULU — The University of Hawaii Athletics Department is worried about coming up with more money to pay athletes’ stipends when it’s already strapped for cash.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association is allowing universities to pay stipends to athletes in the next year or so, Hawaii News Now reported. It’s a major change in college sports driven by the five biggest revenue-producing conferences in the country.
Each full-scholarship athlete at the University of Hawaii will be eligible for nearly $3,550 a year, on top of having tuition, room and board covered by the university.
When the NCAA starts allowing schools to pay athletes’ stipends, those new expenses could cost the University of Hawaii anywhere from $803,441 to $964,050 a year, Jay said.
The department is already $3.5 million in the red, so the financially struggling university will be scrambling to keep up with the schools that can afford to pay even higher stipends, university Athletics Director Ben Jay said.
“You have the Big Five conferences with all the money that they have being able to pay these types of stipends. Where does that leave mid-major schools like Hawaii at?” Jay asked.
Larger schools with more money will start offering athletes stipends as high as $7,000 a year, double the maximum for Hawaii, Jay said.
Another NCAA rule change this year has led the University of Hawaii to plan on spending $350,000 to $400,000 on meals for athletes during the season for the first time. But other schools plan to offer unlimited meals to athletes the entire school year.
“We’re not able to pay for ourselves right now,” Jay said. “We need external help from our fans, our boosters, our businesses and possibly the state legislature for help, because the institution is only able to help us so far.”
As University of Hawaii athletics grapples with increasing travel costs and tries to get out of its $3.5 million deficit, Jay is concerned the school will fall further behind bigger universities that are asking the NCAA to allow other expensive benefits to help student athletes, such as lifetime tuition waivers and extended health benefits.