Originally Posted by Flyers98
Thanks for the clarification. I must remember incorrectly but I thought there was a whole conversation about his when Michael Jordan's kids were in college. People were saying "why wouldn't MJ just pay the tuition to give the team an extra scholarship?" I thought the answer was that the NCAA didn't allow that. If it is allowed I'm actually surprised it doesn't happen more with pro athletes' kids, or just kids with money, (Steph and Seth Curry, Johnny Manzeil, etc...).
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Some examples:
David Stockton, son of John, walked on at Gonzaga and was a role player. I think he legitimately didn't have scholarship offers, but John Stockton is at every Gonzaga game and would absolutely write a check for anything Mark Few asked him for to help that program. David was a decent role player at Gonzaga.
Doc Rivers' son, Spencer, played at UC-Irvine for at least a season without using a scholarship. Another kid who was a role player, but no where near as good as his father.
All-American Doug McDermott played his senior season as a walk-on. His dad was the head coach at Creighton, and what happened was another player was awarded a 6th year of eligibility putting them one over the limit. So Greg McDermott just reduced his paycheck slightly to cover it.
The Louisville example mentioned above... Pitino had two guys actually - one the son of a neurosurgeon and the other who was in someway related to JR Smith that were starters, paying their own way so Pitino could effectively go 2 scholarships over the limit.
Connor McCaffery a top 100 b-ball recruit is redshirting at Iowa this year as a walk-on where his dad is the coach. He's playing baseball there too, but not using any athletic scholarship.
And finally, at Dayton, Keith Waleskowski paid his own way to come to Dayton and walk-on as a redshirt freshman with the understanding he would be on scholarship the next 4 seasons. Now, a scholarship may have opened up that year so not sure how much tuition he actually had to cover if any.
So it does happen... occasionally.