Every school has a Total Cost of Attendance number that has for a long time been available through anything that processes student financial aid for that school. These are numbers/projections that exist to help determine how much financial aid may be needed to go to a given school. If these numbers were to some how make a significant change from what they were recently to a much higher amount for the purpose of a school to trick the system and be able to pay more then it might cause red flags and some government investigation...
Of course - I don't know for sure if coming out of the new governance with in the NCAA if they are still using that as a guideline when it comes to athletes or not. I know when they made reference as an example during conversations that TCOA number used by the government was the reference point...