Very good article that is heavy on facts. Recruiting in your home state makes sense as the tuition is much less when giving out partial scholarships.
The tuition debt problem is the general one which has over $1,200,000,000,000 (yes the number of zeros is correct @$1.2T). Baseball is just a minor example. And the laws make it next to impossible to default on student loans.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/americas-growing-student-loan-debt-crisis-2016-01-15
What kid with a lot of tuition debt can really turn down a $100K as a Jr and then also get the completion of his degree paid for later? I wish it weren't that way but IIWII. The quality of college baseball may suffer. But the players who are in college baseball are largely playing for the love of the sport because the economics doesn't make sense on average. And to me, that is an appeal to college baseball.
And I'm still really glad that Coastal won it all. Underdog beats all the moneyed programs with all the advantages!! (Except us of course, we obviously are the #1 team since we swept Coastal (tic).)
Being a private university with lots of money probably helps. I was looking at the top recruiting classes and Vanderbilt (private university) caught my eye with number and quality of recruits. I would think they must help out a lot with "academic" and "need" scholarships independent of baseball. That would help explain:
- 4 years ending 2016 having 50 recruits
- 4 years ending 2015 having 54 recruits
- 2017 verbal commits of 18 (4 in the top 100 so a few won't show)
- 2018 verbal commits of 20 (11 in the top 100 so many won't show)
While Vandy is the exception, I think the idea that we'll go to a "semi-pro" league of 64-75 teams with additional scholarships allowed is possible.