https://sports.yahoo.com/historic-house-ncaa-settlement-leaving-hundreds...
Under previous rules, most NCAA sports featured a scholarship limit (different by sport), but a few sports had a finite roster cap. For example, the sport of men's volleyball was allotted just 4.5 scholarships but often kept on its roster as many as 25 players, or however many the school permitted.
As part of the new policy, scholarship caps were removed, replaced by formal roster limitations that permit schools — not require them — to offer scholarships to their entire rosters. While this will likely produce more scholarships, the roster caps will require the elimination of walk-on athletes and even, perhaps, some on partial scholarships (though both the settlement and NCAA rules prohibit existing scholarship athletes from losing his or her scholarship).
The difference between a sport's new roster limit and its current roster are drastic in a handful of sports. Many cross country teams keep more than 30 runners on a roster. The new roster limit is 17. The new roster limit for men's volleyball is 18 when many rosters are well over 20, said John Speraw, the new president and CEO of USA Volleyball who coached the men's national team to a bronze medal in Paris.
I haven't seen any news from Tech about increasing or decreasing sizes of any teams but I'm sure there have been.
For example, to stay competitive in their most valuable sports, many programs are likely to increase scholarships in baseball and football. Baseball, currently at an 11.7 scholarship cap, will increase to a 34-man roster limit. Football, currently at 85 scholarships, will increase to 105. To comply with Title IX, any scholarships added on the men's side are likely to be added on the women's side too — unless programs reallocate men's Olympic sport scholarships, taking from the non-revenue to feed the revenue
These are really big increases for football and baseball. In Florida we have already seen the impact of the baseball roster size impacted enrollment for New College of Florida where they are started a brand new athletic department and enrolled over 70 baseball players in the hope to field a team in next two seasons.
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Fast forward 10 years to when athletics fees will mirror costs for room & board, and buying college sporting event tickets will feel like the Ticket Master/StubHub experience where your ticket is $100, but your final cost is $145 after fees & taxes.
Here let me help..... "For example, to stay competitive in their most valuable sports"- your school MUST be in the SEC or B1G... period, end of story.
So no more Sam Rogers situations in the NCAA?
He will just be on the roster can have a scholarship, full or partial now.
i read this as being the end of the sam rogers in non football... with roster sizes dropping you will have less kids who just get to play
Its the end of Billy Rogers who wants to play Volleyball or of Jimmy Rogers who runs the 800m.
For Sam, there is more potential that he gets a Scholarship, because god knows without 105 players, it would be near impossible to field a 22 man squad.
I don't think he would have ever made a roster at VT if he was required to have a scholarship from the start. He showed up and then earned a spot. This can't happen now, you can't just show up and try to walk on.
He may have. There was an 85 scholarship limit. Now there's 105 roster spots.
Have power programs even had open tryouts for the last couple decades (other than specialists)?
We did as recently as 2023, but i dont recall seeing anything around the start of this season
Does this mean the scout team now counts as scholarship roster?
I'm not sure but this is my understanding if every player on the roster has to be on scholarship.
Not quite... in the past there was a limit on scholarships (85) but no limit whatsoever on roster size - we routinely had 125+ on our roster. Now there is a limit to roster size (105), but anyone on the roster can have a scholarship.
Just like how in the past there was nothing forcing us to use all 85 scholarships, we don't have to give all 105 players scholarships. But we probably will.
So when I think about it, college (class of '09) could be construed as 'a couple decades ago' but I did have friends who at least tried out at the open 'walk on' tryout.
P4 programs do this every year, but until now it was for walk on type/scout team spots
Didnt we already know this for football? Seems like it makes sense to apply across all sports
This article is so incredibly important and absolutely hits the nail on the head. The net effect of NIL will be less college athletes...not more.
There will be "more" for some...at the expense of others.....some selected quotes:
And its not just going to be an issue at small, Mid-major Programs:
This was obvious to anyone who was ever paying attention and thinking critically about the repercussions of "NIL." The net of this IS NOT POSITIVE FOR THE AVERAGE COLLEGE ATHLETE. It just eliminates them.
We were told NIL wasn't going to lead to reductions in Olympic sports, just like we were told that it wasn't going to be Pay-For-Play. It was always bullshit and always will be.
But look at it this way....you've gotta crack a few eggs to find money to lease a Ferrari for that 5*, seventeen-year old Running Back.
I don't have a problem with replacing scholarship limits with roster limits (makes more sense to me) but the people getting screwed are current students and recruits.
NCAA really should've had a transition period here, where it takes 4 years for changes to take full effect. Given that this was part of a settlement, I'm assuming this could have been negotiated, and given that it's the NCAA, I bet it didn't occur to anyone that a transition period should exist.
And future...in primarily (probably completely) non-rev sports.
This isn't a temporary thing---these spots aren't coming back. That's the point here. These athletes who train and work every bit as hard as Football players, but they are being kicked to the curb so that we can maintain a slush fund of bribe money to Football and Basketball players to commit and stay at schools.
Might get worse if Football players get employee designation. Title IX goes out the windows then.
That's right. I had not thought of that. They would no longer be athletes and so that 105 for the football team would no longer be counted so those athlete cuts could legally all come from female teams and reduce the Title IX burden.
Not good batman.
That's why this settlement, they won't be employees currently. But longer term why schools and conferences want federal legislation.
Yea, but it's way worse for athletes who are actively recruiting or already on a roster, because they are having something taken away. I'm less concerned about the 12 year old who doesn't have a roster spot in 6 years. That kid probably isn't thinking about college sports yet.
So what i am reading is that there is the potential for schools to hand out hundreds of new scholarships, but less people will get to play. I mean wrestling, baseball, softball, soccer (m/w) will add ~100 new scholarships at VT if we fund them.
I'm guessing schools that aren't in the SEC or B1G will just have to be more selective about which sports to fully fund.
And with Title IX, it's the men's sports that have to go first, since Football creates such a huge hole that has to be countered.
Tumbling is a women sport that has 51 scholarships, you'd think most schools would fund that to counter football
I think that's pretty much the scenario..larger schools are going to reduce the total number of athletes (as the quote i posted above noted).
Smaller schools will almost certainly have to eliminate sports.
I think the ultimate eventuality of this is smaller schools like MAC-level are going to eliminate football because they can't compete anyways and there's no reason to gut their Athletic Dept. to field a FB team.
It would have seemed like the entire point of "NIL" would have been the antithesis of this since it was supposedly about improving the wellbeing of college athletes.
I guess "donate to the Collective so we can crush some more aspirations" doesn't exactly have the same ring to it??