Why are there so many Aussies, Kiwis in NCAA?

The US u16 national team would get absolutely smoked by an Aussie/Kiwi team, are you kidding? It would be like 150-20 and that’s not an exaggeration. Since you clearly know nothing about basketball, here’s just a few of the names that would be on the roster:

Steven Adams: widely considered the strongest man in the NBA, averaged 11.5 rebounds per game last year

Ben Simmons: multi-time All-Star and lockdown defender

Josh Giddey: just finished his second season and one of the best young players in the NBA (was #6 draft pick)

Josh Green: another young, rapidly improving player who’s developing into a very solid NBA player

Joe Ingles: veteran who’s one of the best three point shooters in the game

Those 5 alone against the best American 15-year-olds would just be an absolute rout.

Large in part, the high majority of elite US HS talent are only interested in about 10% of the Universities in the USA. Americans have the idea that they can only compete well if they go to the big university in one of the power5 conferences. Majority of Athletes from other counties do not have this same opinion. Lately, it is starting to shift that way but still there’s so many more of them vs the high school pool of talent that it just makes sense to recruit the athlete from Australia or Morocco. A 4:10 US guy won’t take a look at a school that can then go and get a 3:50 1500m runner from another county who is actually better than the America kid.

He or she wasn't saying anything horrible. Studious is saying that if you go to the USA, your athletics plus your education are an all inclusive holistic thing.

Whereas in some countries, it's not the university system. So you get your education, and your athletics is separate - you run for a club (and maybe your country). Maybe occasionally you compete in university sports, but the focus is different.

Aus and NZ still uses the Abacus. They haven't even advanced to using the Soroban. Hope this helps.

A good friend from the UK describes university sports as the equivalent of intramurals in the USA. The serious and talented athletes are competing for clubs or on contracts. University sport is enthusiasts having a proper f**k-a-bout before heading off to the pub.

Do you know that foreign governments actually have such programs? Why would a foreign government want to spend money sending their athletes to compete at a US school? I suspect what keeps a school from using foreign money to stretch those 12.6 scholarships is a near complete absence of such foreign money.

I am genuinely curious if this is a workaround that programs can use to stock their teams. When I was an undergraduate, most foreign students that I knew were studying in the US on a cultural exchange or a needed skills program. Their country’s ministry of education or culture was footing the bill and expected that they would return home with skills that could not be obtained in their own country.

If someone from Nigeria was an engineering student on a government scholarship and also happened to be a 10.0/20.0 sprinter, could a school like Georgia or Texas sign them for nothing against their scholarship limits since Nigeria is paying their bills? Would it make sense for a developing nation without good facilities or coaches to send their best to develop here? Does the NCAA care who pays so long as it doesn’t come from the official athletic scholarship pool? If they don’t, it seems like a coach with connections could load up on foreign talent for free while only spending on domestic recruits or just not recruiting Americans at all. I’m suspicious when I see college teams that only have 12.6 scholarships to give but have a 50 strong roster with over half of them from other nations.

If your hypothetical Nigerian is in school on a scholarship from the Nigerian government I can't see why that scholarship would count against the limit. If a kid who's a US citizen is at school on an academic scholarship and "walks on" to a school team I'm pretty sure he doesn't count toward the limit.

The reason I think this is that in D-1AA football a school is limited to 63 full scholarships. But the "big time" 1-AA schools (yes that's kind of a contradiction) routinely have more guys on scholarship than that because they sometimes give a kid a partial athletic scholarship and combine it with need based aid. That looks like what you're asking about. Not all D1-AA schools do that. There are conferences that don't give athletic scholarships at all and some that have their own, stricter, limits. The Patriot League limits teams to 60 full scholarships but if a school gives a particular kid half an athletic scholarship AND need based aid to cover the rest the counts that kid as counting against the 60 scholarship limit. But that's a league rule. Not an NCAA one.

So I suppose that theoretically a school could load up by doing what you're suggesting. I'd imagine a school could load up their track team with domestic kids as well by giving them need based rather than athletic aid but if someone knows otherwise I'll happily be corrected. Remember that very few track athletes are getting full rides. I think when you see those teams with 40-50 athletes the majority by far are getting half rides, quarter rides, etc. though some, possibly the foreign ones, are getting a full ride. Maybe some of those foreigners are getting money from their governments but I doubt very many countries care enough about track for this be at all commonplace.

Because the only pro options in Australia is to train with Nic Bideau (who over races his athletes more than NCAA coaches) or Craig Mottram (biggest ego on the continent)

Ben Simmons would not show up.

Buster is a big mouthed critic of Bideau, but realistically they are exactly the same.

As I hung up the phone, it occurred to me, my boy was just like me, he'd grown up just like me.

I am critical of NCAA coaches that overrace their athletes, but at least I can see the motivation behind it (team aspect In championship races). No excuse for it at the pro level.

Data is tremendously skewed as it contains Canadians making up more than 20+ of the international student-athlete body.

They can go back home with a useless American degree and still secure employment.

They're nice kids and don't need to be babied.

Ran out of Kenyan recruits..

You do realize that U.S. universities have many international students? U.S. universities are not just for Americans. The whole point of the college experience is bringing people from different backgrounds together to study and learn from each other.

There are quite a few taxpayers who don't like to see their state public universities give out scholarships to foreign students.

Benefits: Get a degree for free. Race more often with better competition. Northern Hemisphere - better racing opportunites. Better cross section of life choices. It's not Australia.