More scholarship availability is coming across the board.
As a part of the new revenue-sharing model that is set to be implemented for 2025-26, college administrators are adjusting roster limits and thus scholarship limits across the board. “Roster limit” and “scholarship limit” are pretty much the same thing moving forward.
For college football, the limit will be 105, so schools can add an additional 20 scholarship athletes in that sport, if they want to. Basketball will be capped at 15 scholarships/roster spots, and maybe the largest change comes to baseball, which is going from an 11.7-scholarship limit to 34.
Of note, all sports will be “equivalency” sports under the new format, which means that partial scholarships are now an option for coaches in football and basketball. Those previously were “head count” sports, meaning that if a player was on scholarship, he or she had to be on a full scholarship.
That creates some perhaps unnecessary roster flexibility—I don’t know what point or value there’d be to partial scholarships in hoops, for instance, unless you wanted to maintain a couple spots for walk-ons and reward them with a partial ride, say.
Football coaches have maintained through this process that they want to keep walk-ons a part of the culture of the sport, and it’ll be a lot easier to reward those players than it has been under the 85-scholarship limit. It remains to be seen how this might change recruiting approaches, but my guess is it won’t be dramatic. More scholarships on offer may expand recruiting classes for the sake of more competition in camp, but it’s not like the depth chart’s getting any larger.
Tying into that, perhaps, is this bit:
In an important note for football, the 105 may not be a requirement until the start of the competitive season, giving coaches flexibility to go beyond that figure during preseason camp, for instance.
I don’t care for the idea of roster cuts in college sports but I suppose it’s been an informal thing in the increasingly-professionalized college football ranks for a while. Maybe just not to the extent we’ll see in the future.
For baseball, roster sizes will actually be shrinking (currently the limit is 40), but the scholarships available will nearly triple. That is overall a big positive for players, not to mention a relief for coaches. (Trying to imagine how to properly distribute 11.7 scholarships over 40 guys gives me a headache.) It will create a bit of a roster crunch initially, though, which is a bummer.
Baseball programs don’t have to offer 34 scholarships, of course, and undoubtedly the vast majority of mid-majors won’t be able to. Major-conference programs may not go that far either, though they’ll certainly be keeping 34 players on the roster.
There is a lot to take in with all of this, that’s for sure.