UMaine to receive $640,038 from NCAA for student-athletes, BDN reports
The Bangor Daily News reported the University of Maine Department of Athletics is expected to receive a $640,038 allocation from the NCAA. One-time payouts totaling $200 million to nearly 350 Division I schools around the country stem from the liquidation of an NCAA quasi-endowment valued at more than $360 million, according to the article. Each NCAA Division I program will receive an allocation from the fund based on the number of athletic scholarships it provided during the 2013–14 academic year. UMaine’s award is based on 194.47 scholarship grants, the BDN reported. A working group of Division I presidents developed guidelines for use of the funds with the payouts to be dedicated to benefiting student-athletes in the areas of academic support, life skills and career success, diversity and inclusion initiatives, and health and well-being, the article states. “The unique part of this one-time distribution is that it has to be used for enhanced or new programming,” said UMaine Director of Athletics Karlton Creech. “They’ve been very careful to craft this so that schools don’t just use this money to fill a budget gap. They’ve laid out pretty specific parameters for how the money is to be spent and by when.”