DALLAS — College football roster sizes are set to be reduced, but not by as much as many coaches feared.
Commissioners are zeroing in on 105 as the proposed roster limit for football teams, a source briefed on the discussions confirmed to The Athletic, the same number reported Thursday by ESPN and Yahoo! Sports. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, in an interview with The Athletic, would not confirm or deny that number, only that athletic directors and coaches are in the process of being told.
“Change never produces full satisfaction,” Sankey said. “Hopefully we can land on a healthy place, we’re just going to have to deal with things in a little different way, as part of the outcome of our settlement.”
Scholarship limits are being eliminated as part of the settlement in the House v. NCAA case, ending decades of 85 being the standard cap on scholarships a football program has to offer. In their place will be roster limits, after decades of teams carrying as many as 120 players during the season, with no limits during the spring and preseason.
When news of the settlement first came out, coaches worried that it would essentially mean the end of walk-ons, especially if the roster limit was set at around 85 or 90.
So, Arkansas coach Sam Pittman was asked Thursday, would 105 be a good number?
“No. But it’s better than what I thought we were gonna get,” Pittman said. “We can deal with 105. Obviously 110 was the number the coaches wanted.”
SEC coaches have been pushing publicly and privately against lower limits. It was a big topic at SEC spring meetings in late May. Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said last month the lower limits were a “major concern,” pointing to injuries decimating rosters during the course of a season and walk-ons being the “part of the fabric of college football.”
Pittman was asked Thursday whether he thought the pushback worked.
“I do. I think we ended up with more than I thought we were going to,” Pittman said.
Football isn’t the only sport seeing its limits change. Baseball, which for years has had a scholarship limit of 11.7 spread out over a roster more than three times that size, will see its roster limit set in the 30s. That means teams, if they choose, can double or even triple how many baseball scholarships they give out.
That could produce a domino effect around athletic departments and impact Title IX, which calls for athletic departments to give scholarships to men’s and women’s teams in essentially an equal manner. (Technically, in the same proportion as the overall student body of that school.) Football and baseball scholarship additions would then require giving out more women’s sport scholarships, but it also could see schools cut even more men’s sports to maintain their proportions.
“I think there’s still work to be done,” Sankey said. “Scholarship numbers at the conference level. We’ll see how that plays out. Title IX as we’ve talked about has been front and center in our conversations. We’re going to have a balance of both the participation and that scholarship support.”
Sankey confirmed that the scholarship limits will not be set individually by conferences. But he hedged on whether they could differ between power conferences and Group of 5 conferences.
“There’s stages to all of this. And this is yet another stage in the process,” Sankey said. “So some of those answers will have to be in this stage. Some will come in the next stage.”
(Photo: Michael Chang / Getty Images)
