You're at a meeting with your college counselor. He's a big believer in having a well-rounded resume.

"Do you play any sports?" he wants to know.

"Why, yes," you say proudly. "I play rugby with a local club."

The counselor raises his eyebrows. "Rugby? Isn't that just football without padding?"

"Not exactly," you say, even though what you really want to say is, "Of course it's not, you nitwit! Rugby is a completely different game! Jeez, next you're going to tell me that that you don't know who Ritchie McCaw is!"

Hint: he plays for the guys on the right. (Source)

As a rugby player, you're probably used to these types of conversations. You're probably also dreaming of going to college to play rugby and to be surrounded by awesome, dedicated players who won't yell, "Touchdown!" when you score a try. You might even be dreaming of snagging an NCAA scholarship to go with your new rugby-riffic life.

Well, Shmoopers, we got some bad news for you. Only 19 schools sponsored NCAA rugby teams in 2014 (source). Womp womp.

Rugby is an "NCAA emerging sport" (source), which basically means that the NCAA has sort of taken it in. It's like the NCAA's throwing a party and full NCAA sports get to be in the house, while emerging ones have to stand out on the patio… even if it's raining.

"So why even bother seeking NCAA status if that's all you get?" you ask disgustedly.

Good question.

First, the NCAA provides a lot of financial backing. Without NCAA status, players have to use their own money for equipment and transportation (source), which is totally unfair, because everyone knows that college students are broke to begin with.

More importantly, though, is that NCAA status makes something very official. Once a sport is NCAA-approved, schools can fill out their Title IX requirements (source). In fact, NCAA-approved rugby is currently ladies-only. Gentlemen rugby players don't have NCAA backing… yet.

Rugby is the fastest-growing team sport in the USA (source). Clubs and high school teams are popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain, and there are over 900 collegiate teams (source). The USA's men's national team, the Eagles (yes, we have national teams), even played the All Blacks recently. Not that it went all that well for the Eagles.

All in all, it's a good time for colleges to start jumping on the rugby bandwagon. It's a fun bandwagon.

Now that's a bandwagon.

We don't need to tell you this, but we'll say it anyway. There's a lot of stress involved with being a student-athlete. Being on an NCAA team is like having a really exhausting full-time job, and being a student is also like having a really exhausting full-time job. So if you're doing both…well, you can imagine how tired you're going to be.

There's a reason that so many people drop their athletic scholarships by the end of sophomore year: Only the people who really love the game hang on. If you love rugby more than life itself, then you should be able to stick with it for four years. Anything less than a dramatic, all-consuming love of the game will leave you feeling stretched thin and worn out…like a shape shifter's favorite v-neck.

Another part of the reason why rugby's a popular game—and why it's helping schools with Title IX instead of, say, dog sledding—is because it doesn't cost much to start up a team (source). You just give the players a field and a ball and off they go.

Okay, it's not quite as simple as that. Rugby is a famously dangerous game, and it's only more dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. You need to have a good coach, and all the players need to know exactly what's allowed and how to do it. If your coach opens with the line, "So, rugby is basically football without the padding," then run. Run for the hills.

Tackling like a football player in rugby practically guarantees you a nasty head and/or neck injury. Even with proper training, head and neck injuries are super common. So are bruises, scrapes, breaks, lacerations, and—perhaps most fun—ear mutilations (source).

So keep that mouth guard in and that ear protection on.

Because rugby's a rough game, you can't play it for very long. Any sport can do some real damage to your body if you do it long enough—even low-impact sports like golf or curling. For high-impact sports like rugby, it's a pretty short career.

Speaking of careers…well, to be brutally honest with you, Shmoopers, you're going to have a tough time finding any kind of career in rugby beyond coaching club teams. It's not like there's a National Rugby Association. Well, there's an NRA…but the "r" isn't for "rugby." If you show up at the NRA for tryouts, you're going to be mighty disappointed.

Yes, the USA has national men's and women's teams for league and sevens (source). But the odds of landing a spot on one of those are fantastically low. Like, subterranean low.

Here we see early rugby players attempting to locate good odds. (Source)

Simply put, the odds of you getting an NCAA scholarship are slim to none, and the odds of you getting onto a professional team are slightly less than that.

The odds of you getting a private rugby scholarship from your school, however, are a bit higher.

Our professional advice is to look seriously at private varsity and club rugby scholarships…and to copy down Mom's triple-chocolate brownie recipe for when bake sale time rolls around.