WADR: Do you understand the scholarship number rules?i

Posted on: January 10, 2019 at 13:51:48 CT

NCAA By-Laws limit the total number of football scholarships at any one time to 85 and also allow 25 new scholarships to be given each year subject to the requirement that the 85 maximum can not be breached.

Typically, only about half or two thirds of any class ends up spending four years in school.

This attrition, much of it natural rather than forced, allows schools to give up to 25 new scholarships and not violate the 85 total limit.

Additionally, the rules are 25 scholarships per academic year. If a school is under both the annual and total limits for a particular year, it can actually give scholarships to more than 25 kids in a particular class.

I.e. a school has given 22 new scholarships to kids entering in the fall semester of year #1 and has a total of 82 scholarship players in school for the spring semester of year #1. It can give 3 scholarships to mid year enrollees in year #1 and then give 25 new scholarships to kid who enroll the following fall semester, the fall semester of year #2.

It's not really "oversigning" as you define it.

At one time the SEC practiced "oversigning" by signing more than the number of scholarships schools had available and then not allowing all of the kids they signed to enroll, i.e. a school would sign 28 kids to letters of intent and then not give scholarships to all of them.





Edited by ScottsdaleTiger at 14:02:56 on 01/10/19