Here's MV's take on it. This is awesome for the U and for the athletic Department's books.
This is big, since unlike other B1G universities (ahem Wisconsin), the U doesn't use a tuition waiver on its athletic scholarships. In layman's terms, this means that scholarships are an expense of the athletic department and something that needs to be covered using department revenue. Endowing a scholarship (or in this case, two) allows the university to use AD to pay for that expense using returns from the U's athletic endowment fund, which will pay for scholarships in perpetuity (forever). Little Joel has long held the dream of one day seeing every scholarship at the U paid for by endowment, though finding folks to donate 250K a piece to Maturi has proved rather difficult. Without knowing how many basketball scholarships are currently endowed, it's easier numbers wise (since men's hoops has only 13 scholarships per squad) to have a fully endowed (HURR) hoops scholarship program than, say, footbawwww or hockey. Anywho, hats off to Flip for helping out the program the best way he can (which includes not coaching the team).
