Dave Hendrickson writes:
>This situation is orders of magnitude more important than 90% of the BS that
>the NC$$ gets concerned with.
 
I agree, but I question the amount of jurisdiction that the NC$$ has
in this matter.  The reason I question it is I honestly don't know,
and I would welcome any clarification from anyone who knows better.  I
know of the various restrictions on recruiting and all, but I am not
aware of anything governing how a program awards scholarships, makes
promises it may not be able to follow through on, etc.
 
Regarding the Todd Hall situation, Dave writes:
 
>What happened here?  How can a college tell a kid that he "just isn't playing
>anymore"? And if he's one of the better defensemen, why?  The only thing I can
>guess about why? is that BC felt they were rebuilding and would rather go with
>a freshman than an excellent junior who wouldn't be around to help them when
>they had gotten back to the top of the league.  ANy other ideas?  But if he
>had a signed letter of intent, how could this have happened anyways?
 
As to why this happened, I could not get any understanding of it from
the article and there could be many reasons.  So I won't bother to
speculate on what any of them might have been.
 
However, I did not get the impression that Hall was saying BC was
going to take his scholarship away - only that Hall was not going
to play anymore at BC.  Again, let's forget why this might have
happened since we don't know.  But as long as an SA has not broken the
"rules" of his letter of intent, I believe he can maintain his scholarship
regardless of whether he is cut from the team or not.  (BTW, by way of
example only, I believe one of the ways an SA can break the letter is
by doing poorly enough in school.)
 
It seemed to me that despite keeping his scholarship, Hall wanted to
still play hockey.  He knew he was not going to play at BC anymore.
So he transferred to UNH.
 
Coincidentally, you will note, this freed up a scholarship for BC to
use elsewhere, it would appear to me.
 
Given the limited information in the article, I do not believe BC had
the power to take Hall's scholarship away.  But they certainly could
cut him if they wished.  I am not saying that they cut him in hopes
that he would leave and they could use the scholarship for someone
else, but an exceedingly cynical person (which I am not) might see it
that way.
---                                                                    ---
Mike Machnik                                             [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc.                                     *HMM* 11/13/93