But I have yet to see anyone explain to me why it is important for the welfare and benefit of the player who committed to ND for that player to continue to play on the football team if he isn't meeting performance standards.

We have performance standards in every other aspect -- on all students to make certain grades, regardless of the amount of effort they put in. On coaches to win enough, regardless of how nice of a person they are, or how great they are at developing character.

Why shouldn't a paid spot on the football team also be subject to performance standards?

For an otherwise smart guy, you are really embarrassing yourself here.

We don't just promise him tuition, room and board. We promise him a spot on the football team.

There are all sorts of opportunities for chicanery if we don;t have a bright line rule that honors four year commitments to players who choose to play at Notre Dame.

Remember Kelly's "my guys" delineation? Well, that come from his heart. That's how a lot of low rent coaches operate when they come on board. That's why we say players commit to a school, not to a "program" or a coach. Head coaches play favorites. so do assistants. Or they give up on the current year and start playing for next year, to benefit the coach's own interests.

And players can improve year over year. They can grow, things can click, players in front of them can get hurt, kicked out, transfer. Life happens. There's something to be said for sticking things out and perserverance. And there's something to be said for a school for living up to its side of the bargain.

Rule, a scholarship is considered an annual benefit that must be renewed. And 98% of FBS teams treat scholarships that way.

I do not want ND to stoop to that level. I’m not sure, however, that there is unanimity in South Bend on that point. For now it would appear that “medical scholarships” are being appropriately applied.

We are ND for goodness sakes.

Is that ND was the one of the first, if not the first, schools to develop the medical scholarship. The idea was to honor the scholarship commitment to a player who, through no fault of his own, had suffered a career-ending injury, while at the same time not unilaterally disarming ourselves by giving a football scholarship to a player who would never see the field. At the time, most other schools simply yanked the scholarships of players in similar circumstances.

And for that reason, I think the medical scholarships need to continue. Their application, however, should be limited to players who have suffered career-ending injuries, or reasonable facsimiles thereof.