Major changes are coming for football and baseball as NCAA updates scholarship rules
By Kevin Miller
The current state of college athletics is one of constant change. Perhaps more now than at any other point in its history, the NCAA is changing the entire landscape of college sports.
In the last three or four years, NIL and the transfer portal have dramatically changed amateur sports in the United States, and even more changes (some court-mandated) are coming down from the NCAA.
The latest major change was announced this week as the NCAA will change drastically its scholarship count rules across varsity sports, and of the "major" sports, college football and college baseball will be the most obviously affected.
College football is having its roster limit shrunk but its scholarship count increased. According to Dellenger's reports, rosters will move from 120 (the current number) to 105 in 2025, but the expectation is that every player on a roster can be put on scholarship if the school and program wish for them to be so.
College baseball, a sport that long has endured the unjust limit of just 11.7 scholarships for a 40-player roster, also will have its total roster size reduced but its scholarship count increased. While baseball teams will have to drop their roster down to 34 players, they can put as many of them as they like on scholarship.
Of note, men's college basketball will increase roster limits to allow 15 scholarship players.
In keeping up with Title IX requirements, there have been several scholarship increases to women's sports. Most notably, tumbling gymnastics, women's fencing, equestrian, women's cross country, field hockey, women's track and field, women's lacrosse, women's rowing, women's soccer, women's swimming and diving, women's wrestling, and women's water polo all will see double-digit increases in scholarship limits.
It seems inevitable that the majority of non-revenue sports (everything other than football, basketball, and, in some cases, baseball) will not fill their rosters with all of these new scholarships. Financially, athletics department budgets would not be able to handle those payouts, especially in light of coming revenue-sharing requirements for football, the sport that funds most of the non-revenue sports' budgets.
Seeing how this plays out over the next several years will be interesting and, potentially, will shape what changes will come next to college athletics.