NCAA set to increase roster, scholarship limits for football, baseball

Bad news if you’re not an SEC fan: the NCAA is about to increase roster and scholarship limits in football and baseball, and we all know who will be the only ones able to afford the extra costs.

The Athletic is reporting that the new roster and scholarship limits, which are tied to the proposed settlement in the House v. NCAA case, will cap the roster for FBS football at 105, down from the current 120, but schools will be able to fund up to 105 full or partial scholarships for football, up from the current 85.

For baseball, the roster will be capped at 34, down from the current 40, but as with football, the new rules will allow schools to fund up to 34 full or partial scholarships, up from the current 11.7.

Men’s and women’s basketball roster and scholarship limits – currently at 15 roster spots and 13 scholarships – will not change.

Softball will go from a scholarship limit of 12 to a roster limit of 25. Volleyball will go from a scholarship limit of 4.5 to a roster limit of 18.

A lot of folks will assume that the biggest impact will be in football, with the big-money schools – read: the SEC, Ohio State and Michigan from the Big 10, and Notre Dame – being the ones best-positioned to be able to fund as many of the 20 new scholarship slots that will be made available to everybody.

I can see baseball being impacted maybe moreso, just because college baseball doesn’t make money anywhere, even at UVA, which routinely plays in front of full or near-full houses in a 6,000-seat stadium, and yet, SEC schools are already assumed to be well ahead of the field in investing money in NIL for top players.

The ability to give out full scholarships in addition to NIL money will be a decided advantage for those who are already investing money in a losing business enterprise.

UVA was already losing $3 million a year before the school doubled coach Brian O’Connor’s salary in the contract extension announced last month.

Can the people who make the calls on money justify basically doubling the estimated cost of scholarships for baseball, which the Virginia Athletics Foundation pegged at $692,883 in the 2023-2024 academic sports year, on top of what it’s already losing in baseball?

Not that there’s anything we can do about it, but even so, I don’t like where things are headed there.