Coverage of NCAA or CHL Scholarship

What Does an NCAA or CHL Scholarship Actually Cover

Recently, a lawsuit was launched against the WHL, which resulted in a flood of questions from concerned Hockey Advocate parents asking; “What exactly Does a CHL or NCAA Scholarship cover?” If you haven’t already read either of these two articles (Law Suit – WHL Response), the WHL is being sued by former Captain, 5-year Player and US Citizen Zack Dailey of the Everett Silvertips. In short, having lived in Alberta for many years he designated the University of Alberta as the University that he would attend, but after spending more then 5 Years living and playing hockey in the USA, the institution re-classified him as an out of province student and thus subject to vastly more expensive tuition ($15,408.56 versus $6,200). The lawsuit resulted as the WHL felt that they do NOT have to pay for the extra fees whereas the Player feels the spirit if not the intent of his contract was that the Club would pay for his tuition at THAT University regardless of additional costs. The lawsuit was needed presumably because this particular scenario is NOT covered in the Standard CHL / WHL Player Agreement (SPA). Now, I’m NOT going to give you a legal analysis, as I’m certain that I’d just bore the heck out of all of you. Instead I want to use this example to explain what your Scholarship agreement actually covers in both the CHL and NCAA. Today we will look at the CHL/WHL contract and next time the NCAA Letter of Intent.

There’s no need to go through the entire WHL Contract in this article, we just need to focus on the scholarship terms and at any other benefits or extras that a Player can negotiate into his SPA. Below is an extract from the WHL contract, I’ve cut out all the unnecessary legal jargon and tried to only include the relevant information pertaining to the Scholarship Program.

4.         WHL Scholarship Program:

(a) …the Club agrees to pay or reimburse or cause to be paid… the Player’s educational expenses to enrol in and attend a designated publicly funded post secondary institution based upon the assessment for a full-time student, following completion of the Player’s WHL playing career, including tuition fees, compulsory student fees, and textbooks…

So, according to the various CHL Standard Player Agreements, Players are entitled to one year of post-secondary education for every season in which they play at least ONE game, to a maximum of 5 years of entitlement. This guarantee includes: tuition fees, compulsory student fees and necessary textbooks. This is subject to certain conditions, such as designating a home university for price comparison. Also, another section of the contract provides that during his playing career, the Club is responsible to pay for the Player’s; room and board; travel expenses to and from home once each season as well as an additional Christmas holiday trip; tutors and educational advisors as deemed reasonably necessary to assist the Player in his academic studies.

So that covers the black and white portion of the SPA contract. You will notice that room and board and travel costs after his playing career are NOT covered by the Scholarship agreement.
That covers the Standard terms of the ‘scholarship deal’, but in the Addendum, individual Players can and do negotiate other guarantees where possible.
What kind of ‘extras’ you may ask?

Players and where needed, their agents can and do negotiate for many different ‘extras’. These extras may include:

Extra years up front – teams can and do offer Players 4 year guarantees as an incentive to sign right from the beginning. This is discouraged at the CHL League level, but lets face it, it happens! It has been said that CHL teams cannot offer more then 1-2 years at a time, but I know from experience that Tier II clients have been offered and accepted complete 4 year packages for their remaining 1 or 2 years of Junior eligibility to sign.

Cash – Every Player receives a monthly stipend that SPA calls an ‘allowance’. This is completely negotiable as well and of course depends on how much leverage you have. The second instance where a Cash payment may arise revolves around veteran players. It is not unheard of for a CHL team to pay a ‘real’ salary to a returning or free agent 20 year old. Think of it this way, a Player gives up 1 year of Pro experience and a $30-40,000  AHL contract to stay and play one last year of Junior. The team can then sell another 1-2000 seasons tickets because they are a contender because of his skillset. For a Multi-million dollar company, absorbing an AHL type salary isn’t exactly a burden if they can put more butts in the seats, it’s a no brainer.

No trade clause – typically, most players receive a limited No-trade clause while they are still in High school, but this can be extended as a matter of negotiation and leverage.

Gas allowances – this is another standard extra that is a league approved standard which players can apply for monthly.

Tickets to home games – Typically Players are entitled to apply for up to 2 tickets for home games.

Specific equipment requirements – CHL teams typically do provide equipment needs for all players, but we all know that playing with a $30 stick isn’t quite the same as a high end 1-piece $400 stick. Once again, your mileage may very based upon how much leverage you have in negotiating with the CLUB and of course depending on what sponsorship deal they may or may not have with specific equipment or stick or skate manufacturers.

 A lot of the time, many of these are included as a matter of course for everyone, but you need to know what is possible and more importantly, that you can try to secure more in your contract beyond the standard scholarship terms.

Next article we will examine the NCAA scholarship agreements or National Letter of Intent…

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