Major changes coming to College sports roster sizes, "walk on", and Olympic sports at many schools.

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.

DISCLAIMER: Forum topics may not have been written or edited by The Key Play staff.

Comments