03:51 AM CDT on Monday, October 24, 2005

By JEFF MILLER / The Dallas Morning News

Once an NCAA scholarship athlete hits campus, that financial aid goes on an annual clock. It can be increased, decreased or eliminated at a coach's discretion simply with written notice due July 1.

Such changes usually affect little-used newcomers. But at least one Dallas-area football player learned this year at Division II Henderson State in Arkadelphia, Ark., that it can happen to a senior.

Running back Larry Owens from Richardson High School was among the players who had their scholarships cut. Henderson State athletics publicist Troy Mitchell said four or five seniors were among the approximately two dozen players affected after the hiring of Scott Maxfield from two-year Blinn College in Brenham, Texas.

Division II allots 36 total football scholarships, so virtually all of the scholarship players are on partial grants.

According to the roster on the school's Web site, five seniors returned from last year's team.

Maxfield acknowledged it was difficult to cut aid to players who had been with the program for three years – four, if redshirted.

"But you know the way college athletics is today," Maxfield said. "I'm on a one-year contract, December to December. It's either hurt their feelings or hurt mine."

Athletic director Sam Goodwin said such decisions are a reality of building a winning program, especially in Division II.

"It's not good for anybody other than, you've got to keep your job," Goodwin said. "At the same time, it's not really fair to kids who stay in your program for three years and have done everything the coach has asked."

Owens would have been the team's third-best returning rusher this season. He played in all 10 games as a junior in 2004, gaining 317 yards rushing and 81 yards receiving.

Owens elected to remain at Henderson State without playing, on track to graduate next spring. Neither he nor his family would comment on the situation.

Maxfield led Blinn to the No. 7 ranking in the National Junior College Athletic Association's Division I in 2004. He said he evaluated players at Henderson State as he would a pro team with a salary cap.

"A guy that's on $4,000 worth of scholarship money ... you evaluate him and you find out that there's a guy on $1,000 scholarship that's a lot better," he said. " Then you have to make the adjustment. That's the only fair way to do it, to give the guy that's the better player the most money."

Mississippi State assistant kinesiology professor David Ridpath is this year's head of the Drake Group, which seeks reform in major college athletics. He said he supports a policy that prohibits revoking scholarships for athletes entering their third academic year. Utah's Weber State, where he worked in the late 1990s, had such a policy.

"If it was a recruiting mistake or an issue that you hadn't addressed in the first two years, that was your problem," said Ridpath, a former wrestling coach. "A lot of coaches didn't like that."

Grant Teaff, the former Baylor football coach now heading the American Football Coaches Association, said he couldn't envision pulling a senior's scholarship.

"It's a common-sense and a common-heart concept," Teaff said. "Not everybody is going to be playing the full time, but everybody can make a contribution. Even as a scout-team player. And most coaches know if a youngster's making a contribution, he is going to be around and get to finish his degree."

Teaff added that such actions could also hurt recruiting.

"Those high school coaches don't appreciate it," he said. "They get flak from parents within the school system: 'You recommended that Johnny take this school. Now, all of a sudden, they're telling him they don't want him anymore.' That's just not good PR."

Goodwin said Henderson State will probably follow the lead of its Gulf South Conference brethren and decrease its dependence on high school signees.

"Successful programs [in Division II] are transfer programs," he said. "Usually at this level, you're not getting the [high school] guys that are going to come in and make an immediate impact."