Y11 Notes: July 30, 2024
Every bit of big-shifting rules changes in college sports seems to be bigger than the last, rhetorically speaking. But last week’s news reports from Yahoo!’s Ross Dellinger actually seems like colleges athletic departments actually have to huddle up and make some decisions.
Per Dellinger, who is reporting on the ongoing House settlement saga, college sports’ roster limits have been set across the NCAA landscape. The new rules changes will go into effect starting next academic year (2025-26).
Below are tables NCAA men’s and women’s sports’ previous roster limits, which was defined by the number of scholarships a team could give out, with their new roster size maximums, via Dellinger’s reporting. I’ve also highlighted the sports currently offered at Eastern Michigan & the sports that ended up getting cut in 2018-19:
General thoughts
What’s EMU going to pay for? That’s going to be the big question home in Ypsilanti that won’t forget how painful of a process the 2018-2019 years were in court after the school decided it was time to cut four sports (women’s tennis would be saved), but it’s time for some schools to start updating their books at home.
To be an FBS school, currently, a school must offer 16 sports and FCS-levels schools must offer 14 sports. If all this new era of college sports is a treadmill for everybody to make decisions in the name of football, I’m just going to say that I expect those figures to change soon. (Knowing what those numbers could be would really help schools thinking about the previous bullet.)
I looked it up. There are 28 NCAA/NCEA-recognized college equestrian teams. That list goes from Georgia to Centenary University. I don’t know enough about the sport to have an opinion, but I really didn’t know there was such a demand for the roster size there to bump up to 50.
In any case, schools will really have to organize and stamp themselves with their athletic identities. Football is the front porch for most and basketball is usually on people’s minds when their football teams have a 1-4 record into October. But the increase in scholarships across all sports means, to me, a more competitive field of college sports everywhere you look.
Football thoughts
I’m choosing to be optimistic in some regard. I’ve actually had a small part of me think that roster limits were sort of needed in this sport. Sure teams will lose out on that next walk-on-to-superstar poster player, but this is also going to end the endless hoarding of talent behind the sidelines at the super elite colleges, right? Maybe the Ohio States and Georgias of the world still get to come out on top because of this rule change because they each still get to have 20 extra scholarships to use. But maybe the kid who would’ve ended up being Auburn’s third-string sophomore scout team linebacker can actually go somewhere else with more of a chance to compete.
The walk-ons thing is something people complain about. Again, I’m not complaining that guys have to be on scholarship now. It’s maybe still worth noting here that the Brian Dooley-Zack Conti story doesn’t happen if they played in a world there’s 105 college football players on scholarship at a given time.