ST. CLOUD, Minn. — St. Cloud State University will offer living expense stipends to hockey scholarship recipients next year, under a new NCAA rule that allows Division I programs to cover the actual “Cost of Attendance” for players.

“The NCHC is one of strongest hockey conferences in the country, and a number of schools have indicated they are doing cost of attendance, as has the Big 10,” St. Cloud State Athletic Director Heather Weems told KARE.

“Being able to remain competitive, being able to recruit at a high level, is really important to our team, and is important to our performance.”

Weems said that men’s and women’s hockey are the only two Division I sports at Saint Cloud, so roughly 50 scholarship hockey players will be affected by the change.

Traditionally athletic scholarships cover tuition and fees, room and board plus books. Under the “cost of attendance” system universities attempt to come up with a figure that reflects the true cost of going to school for the average student on that particular campus.

An expense stipend would be offered as part of scholarship negotiations with prospective recruits.

“This may cover the cost of travel for student athletes if they’re going home, so whether that’s flight or gas money or that type of thing,” Weems explained.

“It can be laundry money, extemporaneous sorts of expenses they incur just in daily life that isn’t necessarily considered part of room and board.”

She said finding better ways to legally cover student’s athletes’ expenses is a conversation happening at colleges across the nation, and it’s not without debate given stretched budgets.

“Given budget tightness in a lot of places it doesn’t come without much thought and much conversation as we try and balance what is we put into our athletics programs,” Weems explained.

“But certainly it’s important to competitiveness, important to recruiting, how we continue to maintain the high performance of our teams.”

She noted that hockey is the top revenue sport at the school, both in terms of ticket sales and corporate sponsorships.

NCAA under pressure

And the NCAA has been battling a wave of sentiment about the profits some schools make from the endeavors of unpaid amateur athletes.

Last year a court struck down an effort by college football players to form a labor union.

And former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon sued the NCAA over the use of college players’ likenesses in video game, because the organization was profiting from licensing the game without compensating the players.

O’Bannon’s lawsuit led to a ruling in 2014 that barred the NCAA from licensing players’ images for video games. But the judge in that case ruled that colleges could pay student athletes up to $5,000 in deferred compensation.

Wednesday a federal appeals court upheld the lower court’s ruling, barring the NCAA from making money on video games based on actual players. But the appellate court also threw out the deferred compensation option as well, saying it would amount to paying amateur athletes.

The court said universities would be limited to the “cost of attendance” model already in place. They’re allowed to give student athletes less than cost of attendance, but no more than that.

“Our cost of attendance plan can go forward under this decision. There’s nothing in this decision that would prevent us to moving ahead with this,” St. Cloud State’s Weems remarked.