The Scholarship Game: An examination of how universities divvy up scholarship money and the impact on student athletes.

After years of playing baseball with the elite Dallas Mustangs youth travel team, Tyler Sibley is weighing scholarship offers to play shortstop at a Division I school next fall.

The financial aid Sibley receives in college won't come close to covering the money his father, Tim, has spent getting him to this point.

The same can be said for countless other athletes across North Texas whose parents often spend well in excess of $25,000 so their kids can compete at the highest levels in youth sports such as baseball, swimming, soccer, tennis and golf.

Scholarships in those sports are a numbers game.

And the numbers don't favor the checkbooks of parents.

In Division I, baseball teams are allowed to have 35 players – but there are only 11.7 scholarships to divide among the roster. Track and field and cross country teams sometimes have in excess of 50 athletes on their rosters but only 12.6 scholarships.

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