Question remains if NCAA gives extra year of eligibility: How will Fresno State pay for it?

The NCAA has set in motion eligibility relief for spring sports student-athletes who are losing a season of competition because of the coronavirus pandemic.

That could be a bind on a program like Fresno State, which is already struggling to fund its scholarships and already receives roughly 44% of its budget ($19.2 million) from university support.

“We’ll have to figure it out,” athletics director Terry Tumey said. “We’re challenged in all aspects financially and this is another thing, but it would be the right thing to do.

“We would have to make concessions in some other areas possibly, but we’d find a way to have an equitable experience for our student-athletes. I think that’s what our charge is, so we’ll have to figure it out.”

The NCAA on Monday will discuss and vote on eligibility relief issues – the national governing body says its coordination committee “supports providing schools with a framework in which they have the autonomy to make their own decisions in the best interest of their campus, conference and student-athletes.”

The details are still to be finalized. For instance, the NCAA could grant an extra year of eligibility to seniors, but then what about the juniors, sophomores and freshmen? It could expand scholarship limits in its spring sports for one, two or three years. It could give student-athletes another year of eligibility while maintaining scholarship limits, leaving some tough roster decisions for coaches.

There are questions on the academics side, too. There could be Title IX implications for some athletics departments. What about a student-athlete who was taking a redshirt season in a spring sport? And the graduate transfer market could be flooded.

Funding at Fresno State

Those could all be challenges to a university athletics program. But if the NCAA provides an extra year of eligibility for spring sport student-athletes and expands scholarship limits for spring sports, the cost of the additional scholarships no doubt will further challenge the Fresno State athletics department.

The net position of the Bulldog Foundation, which raises funds for athletics scholarships, has been in a steady decline for the past several years.

At the end of 2015, its net position was $16.7 million.

At the end of 2019, it was $9.2 million.

The bill for athletic aid in the 2019-20 budget is $8.2 million.

It is not just the cost of additional scholarships. Expanded rosters also would increase operating costs for sports programs, and perhaps require more academic, medical, nutritional and training support staff.

Fresno State has 10 spring sports programs, and only women’s tennis is a head-count sport. Baseball and softball, men’s and women’s golf, men’s tennis, women’s water polo, women’s lacrosse and women’s track and field are all equivalency sports, allowing coaches and athletics departments to split a scholarship among two or more student-athletes as long as the total does not exceed the NCAA limit for that sport.

Baseball, for instance, has a limit of 11.7 scholarships.

The Bulldogs have one senior on their women’s tennis roster, but a total of 30 in their other spring sports.

Some will graduate and decide to move on to careers or graduate programs; others depending on academic standing could come back for another year to complete degrees or start a graduate program at Fresno State while on scholarship.

But if just half of those seniors return and each is on 50% scholarship, that would add another 7.5 scholarships to be covered. The total cost of attendance including books, room and board and personal expenses is more than $23,000, according to the Bulldog Foundation.

“We understand the ramifications from that, but there hasn’t been much guidance from the NCAA yet as it relates to how that’s going to happen and how it affects things like roster management and roster sizes and also the academic side of the house in terms of how that piece will work,” Tumey said. “There are a lot of open-ended questions to that. I think the general premise of what the NCAA is trying to do is admirable – it’s trying to not harm the student-athlete and the experience, but there are a lot of moving parts that need to be figured out.”

Tumey added, “It is a good gesture that places the student-athlete at the center of what we do, which should always be our approach.”

Winter sports

The NCAA also will address issues with winter sports student-athletes, who lost opportunities to compete in championship events.

Fresno State had five wrestlers and one diver who had qualified for NCAA championships, and its women’s basketball program had earned the Mountain West Conference’s guaranteed bid to the WNIT. (One of the wrestlers, Josh Hokit, has already indicated he’s moving on for a chance at an NFL career.)

Those events were all canceled due to coronavirus.