How Much Does a College Scholarship Actually Cost?
The full math behind “cost vs. payoff” — what a season really costs, what the NCAA's own numbers say the payoff typically is, and why the two rarely land in a family's favor.
Last reviewed: August 2026
Every family chasing a college scholarship is really running two numbers against each other: what the sport costs over the years, and what a scholarship is statistically worth. Most people only ever look at the second number, and only the good-news version of it. Here's both sides, plainly.
The cost side
Take a family paying the published national average for soccer — $1,188 a year, from the Aspen Institute's Project Play survey — over 10 years of youth and travel play. That's $11,880, before any private coaching, camps, or travel upgrades most competitive families layer on top. Only four sports (soccer, basketball, baseball, football) have a published per-sport average; every other sport is measured against a $1,016 all-sports average instead.
The payoff side
The NCAA publishes, every year, the actual share of high school athletes in each sport who go on to compete in college — this year's NCAA roster count divided by last year's high school participant count. For boys' soccer that's 5.9% at any division. If a scholarship comes, the NCAA's own Recruiting Facts sheet says Division I and II schools award an average of about 20,305 a year, per athlete, across all sports combined — not a sport-specific number, since the NCAA doesn't publish one.
Multiply those together across a 4-year college career and you get an expected value: probability times payout. It's the same math an insurer runs, not a forecast for any one athlete — most families who invest in a sport will never see a scholarship at all, which is exactly what a 5.9% probability means.
Why the net is usually negative
Run the two sides together and the expected scholarship value falls short of the total invested for most sports, most families. That's not a flaw in the math — it's the real return most families get, which is exactly why SidelinePlan shows both numbers side by side instead of leading with just one.
Run your own numbers
Plug in your child's sport, gender, annual cost, and years of play to see the full cost-vs-payoff comparison.
Open the Cost vs. Payoff Calculator →What this leaves out
- The scholarship figure is an all-sport aggregate, not broken out by sport — the NCAA doesn't publish that split.
- Expected value isn't a prediction for any individual athlete — actual outcomes are binary (a scholarship or none).
- Division III offers no athletics scholarships at all; the figures above apply to a Division I or II award.
Sources
- Probability of competing in college, by sport and gender: NCAA — Estimated Probability of Competing in College Athletics, 2024-25 survey years — ncaa.org.
- Average annual family cost, by sport: Aspen Institute Project Play — State of Play youth sports parent surveys — 2022 Costs to Play chart (PDF).
- Average scholarship value: NCAA — Recruiting Facts (Division I and II athletics scholarships) (2024-10) — NCAA Recruiting Facts (PDF).
Informational only, not financial or recruiting advice. The expected-scholarship figure is a statistical illustration, not a prediction for any individual athlete.