On stipends, players' families are surely with Delany

CHICAGO - Three years ago this month, as an incoming Iowa freshman linebacker working out in Iowa City with his new football teammates, Christian Kirksey probably could have used a little extra money.

His father, Elmer Kirksey of St. Louis, died of a heart attack in July 2010 at age 58. The NCAA adminsters a fund (see form) athletes can apply for to cover emergency expenses. emergency expense fund that athletes can apply for. But Kirksey, then 18, perhaps could have used some cash on the spot to help get himself home for the funeral.

A quick way to irritate a lot of university athletic department people and college sports fans is to suggest student-athletes should get a little extra money in addition to the value of their scholarships. The schollies are worth a lot, those people argue, and they're right.

But the practicalities are these: The time-demands placed on those student-athletes are substantial. They have real-life expenses like every other college student. And, a lot of people make money on the athletes' backs.

There is a very real gap between athletic scholarships and the true cost of attending college. Delany said stipends need to “need to be implemented” up to the “cost of education.” Plus, families' expenses add up quickly if they travel to see their kids play.

So here on Wednesday, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said he thinks stipends to cover cost-of-living allowances should apply to all full-scholarship athletes in compliance with Title IX.

“I think we could figure out a way to do this.” Delany said. “We've done more complicated things than this.

“There's a little bit of pocket money we can afford to do - that we should do."

Last week, SEC Commissioner Mike Slive noted that smaller schools - understandably so, from their financial viewpoints - blocked a proposal to the NCAA to give student-athletes a $2,000 annual stipend. Stipe and a lot of SEC people want it to become a reality.

South Carolina football coach Steve Spurrier said last week that SEC football coaches want their players to get “about $300 a game, and basketball would be a little less.” This wasn't the first year Spurrier suggested it, but the notion has gained traction lately among major-conference folks.

South Carolina can afford it. South Carolina State can't. Which is one of several reasons a “Division 4” of college football for the big boys is coming. Just like the major-college football playoff finally came. And like stipends for major-college student-athletes should and will come.

Elmer Kirksey was a U.S. Postal Service employee and an assistant pastor in his church. He worked with a prison ministry. He did outreach work in communities on both sides of the Mississippi River in metro St. Louis. He and his wife, Patrice, had seven children. Christian, the youngest, was the sixth to attend college.

Elmer suffered a stroke and had a paralyzed esophagus, and was hospitalized for all of Christian's senior season of high school football. “He did see me graduate high school,” Christian said here Wednesday during Big Ten Media Day interviews. “That was a great feeling.”

It was three weeks from the start of the Hawkeyes' 2010 training camp when Elmer died. Christian may have been the baby of the family, but “I didn't feel much like the baby. You kind of have to grow up and become a man. Life got real at that point.”

He got himself home. And after his father's funeral, he returned to Iowa City to resume his life as a Hawkeye.

“I figured this is what he wanted me to do,” Kirksey said. “He wouldn't want me stopping what I was doing just to sit there and be sad. He wanted me to go chase my dream, to make him proud and make my family proud.”

Kirksey has been a good player for Iowa, regarded highly enough as a person by Hawkeyes coach Kirk Ferentz to be one of Iowa's three player representatives here Wednesday and today.

He certainly has earned what he has gotten. A little more would be right, not wrong. Finally, some of the biggest players in major-college sports administration are acknowledging that.

(To see the complete transcript of Delany's address to the media on Wednesday, click here.)