[Mr.Kimball]

I had the opportunity to play NAIA basketball at a couple schools, but the "scholarship" offers were more dependent on what I could earn in terms of academic scholarships more than anything. Had I attended either of the two schools I would have been paying between 1500-3000 dollars a year because I didn't qualify for any other type of financial aid. Typically a NAIA "athletic scholarship" means how much money you qualify for through financial aid and, coupled with assistance to obtain academic scholarships, and the university providing ammenities such as books or a meal plan. Meanwhile, I had a full academic scholarship to EKU as long as I maintained a 3.0 GPA, that coupled with the money I got from KEES (sp?), covered my tuition and my housing roughly every year.

I loved playing basketball, but it was pretty obvious NAIA would be the end of the road in terms of my playing career. So it came down to paying a little bit of money, attend a small school, have most of my free time occupied by basketball. Or, attend a larger university with alot of my friends, have school basically payed for save books and food, and have my free time for whatever I wanted. The choice was easy for me.

I was fortunate to have the option of a scholarship to EKU.. for people who need the help financially NAIA is a great option and provides athletes a chance to get a phenominal education at a discounted price. There is alot of misinformation, especially on the side of parents and athletes, as to what an athletic scholarship entails. Once you get away from Division 1, true "Full rides" are basically non-existent... and even at the D-1 level they are not as prevalant as people think. UK Baseball is one of the better programs in the country but only a moderate fraction of their players are truly on "full rides".

I will disagree with you on that 100%. UK does not offer full athletic rides in baseball to anybody.. My oldest son was in John Cohen's 2nd recruiting class, so I am very familiar with how UK spreads their money around. D1 colleges only have 11.7 scholarships to divide among a roster of 40+ players. And as a result, they may only have 2 or 3 full scholarships available depending on who graduated the previous year, again to divide among 8-10 incoming freshmen.

As an example, Colin Cowgill was in Cohen's first recruiting class. He was Kentucky's reigning Mr. Baseball, and everyone knows how Cowgill eventually performed during his UK career as well. Cohen told me in my personal parent meeting, that he had signed Cowgill to a staggering total of $500.00 per year. The rest of his tuition was paid for by KEES money, adademic scholarship, or whatever other academic insintives the university could offer. Also he was an in state student and a Lexington native that was able to take advantage of the lower in state tuition rate, plus not be reliant on room and board costs. He was able to live at home. UK is no different than any other university in that with that limited number of scholly's to offer, non of them can afford to give one player a scholly based 100% on true athletic money. It's really no different than NAIA, or DII. What money you receive is coupled with whatever other options that university may have available. BUT, whatever offer you recieve is all based first on what your personal FASFA report entails. They first see what your personal finances are, and then package things togther based on that.

I can back this up a little further. While attending a University of Tennnesee trip, Delmonico also told me that he had never in his entire coaching career, ever offered any player a full athletic ride.