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Home > Bison Media Zone > Bison athletics jumps on Alston bandwagon, will award $1.5 million in first year
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Episode:

Bison athletics jumps on Alston bandwagon, will award $1.5 million in first year
Category: Sports & Recreation
Duration: 00:00:00
Publish Date: 2024-04-18 15:46:27
Description: FARGO North Dakota State is adding Alston Payments to its starting lineup of benefits to its student-athletes. It’s no small dollar amount, either.

The athletic department announced on Thursday morning it’s starting an “NDSU Graduating Champions Fund,” thanks to an endowment established by unnamed donors. It’s expected to award more than $1.5 million to all sports in the first year alone starting in 2024-25.



All NDSU athletes will have the chance to earn the award regardless of scholarship or walk-on status with annual amounts ranging from $3,000 to $5,980, the latter being the maximum allowable by NCAA standards. The amounts will be determined by academic performance with awards based on semester and cumulative grade-point averages.



The university can set its own standards on what it deems as academic success.



It comes on top of scholarship funds raised primarily by Team Makers booster group, cost of attendance stipends for scholarship athletes, NDSU’s NIL Store and the recently-formed The Green and The Golf Collective that came about from the NCAA’s name, image, likeness ruling.



The Graduating Champions Fund comes with a caveat: qualifying student-athletes would receive half of their semester award during the following term with the other half deferred until either graduation or eligibility being exhausted.



“Graduating Champions will provide long-lasting financial support,” said NDSU athletic director Matt Larsen. “Historically student-athletes graduating from NDSU continue to have positive impacts in the community and contribute to the regional workforce.”



Larsen points to NDSU’s four-year average athletic cumulative GPA of 3.40.



Alston payments were created from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2021 that paved the way for college athletes to benefit from their name, image, likeness (NIL) as well as money tied to academic success. NDSU becomes the second-known school in the Missouri Valley Football Conference to establish an Alston program. The University of North Dakota last summer announced a program to award $960,000 in payments annually.



As of last fall, more than 50 Division I schools were providing Alston Payments, according to The Athletic.


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