105 is college football's new key roster number. What will it change? (2024)

For decades, it was the accepted reality: College football teams could only give out 85 scholarships. Beyond that, they had a certain number of walk-ons.

And for decades other college teams also knew they had a scholarship limit, plus walk-ons. Baseball teams, which could roster around 40 players, had a scholarship limit of 11.7. How exactly did that work?

Well, you don’t need to know anymore.

The historic House v. NCAA case settlement agreement institutes new roster limits for each sport in place of longtime scholarship caps as of the 2025-26 school year, which will give each team one tidy number to remember but still leaves the potential for confusion and hard decisions for athletic departments.

Football’s new roster cap will be 105. Baseball’s will triple to 34. Other sports are also seeing big changes:

Why was this negotiated into the settlement? From the NCAA’s view, scholarship limits were seen as susceptible to court challenges; in fact, Steve Berman, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers in this case, sued on behalf of a walk-on athlete two decades ago. (The case was settled.) Given all the losses the NCAA has incurred lately, the organization didn’t want to risk another defeat. The plaintiff lawyers, meanwhile, saw it as a chance to increase the number of athletes receiving scholarships. They agreed to lower roster limits in exchange for that compromise.

The new system allows schools flexibility to decide how many scholarships within the roster limit they want to give out. That was a key part of the settlement for the NCAA. How does it all work? Here’s a glimpse into the agreement.

Power 4 football

The 105 cap will impact programs differently across competitive tiers. A few schools may recruit both transfer and high school prospects with the intent of offering all 105 scholarships to the most talented players. But several developmental programs harbor rich walk-on traditions, in which a few lightly recruited players each year earn scholarships for their contributions.

Those programs often carry 120 or more players on their roster. When preparing to trim that total to 105 for the 2025-26 season, schools will need to decide whether to recruit rosters composed of full-scholarship players or offer partial scholarships to continue to invest in players who formerly were considered walk-ons. Meanwhile, they’ll need to usher several players off the roster to get under the limit.

“Every school is going to have a different perspective on it,” said Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz, the longest-tenured head coach in the FBS. “I don’t know that we can go out and find 100 guys, although maybe we can, because the other schools won’t be able to take as many players.”

“The unknown is what’s been difficult,” Northwestern coach David Braun said. “The concerns that I have are, what does it look like for the walk-on? Are there still walk-on opportunities? What does it look like for the development of individuals on the team? Whereas the rosters become smaller, that puts a premium on just trying to find the best talent that you can put on the roster. Rather than saying, when you have a larger roster, we can allow some young guys to develop over time.”

Football programs previously could not award partial scholarships to athletes as those in other sports or lower levels can. Starting next year, a team will be able to dedicate, for example, 90 or 95 scholarships for its roster and split 10 or 15 among several players. Among the scholarship-splitting scenarios could be covering tuition for an out-of-state athlete while paying for books or other costs for an in-state athlete. The program then could supplement the full cost of attendance for those athletes through a financial stipend or name, image and likeness payments.

“We all have to re-identify and re-look at the word scholarship and then re-look at the word walk-on,” Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck said. “If I told you right now, I want you to be a walk-on, but I have the ability to give you money, you take the money and whether I call you a walk-on or not, you’d rather take the money and have your school paid for. But does that mean you’re on scholarship? Or you’re still a walk-on? And where does that money actually come from? So I think that that’s where this whole thing has to be re-looked at.”

Many within the SEC have been skeptical that teams will go up to 105 scholarships. Once you get past 90, said one administrator granted anonymity to discuss his program’s thinking before the strategy is finalized, you’re talking about players not likely to play much anyway. The amount of scholarships a program gives out may be going up to 105, but the number of players needed to field a team is staying the same. The coaches were more worried about not being able to roster more than 85-90 players, a possibility floated within early rumors of the settlement terms, than they were eager to be able to put more players on scholarship.

“It’s better than we thought we were gonna get,” Arkansas coach Sam Pittman said recently. “We can deal with 105.”

Group of 5 football

For football programs outside the power conferences, there’s just as much uncertainty. At AAC media days, UAB coach Trent Dilfer and Memphis counterpart Ryan Silverfield bemoaned the loss of non-scholarship athletes and how they will impact both their rosters and their universities.

“I think any coach that tells you they’re in favor of roster limits is full of it,” Silverfield said. “I’ve not talked to a single head coach in the country that’s in favor. … If you’re talking maybe 40 walk-ons (at some places), they’re paying full tuition, staying in the dorms. You know how many admissions departments, as male enrollment is down in college, they can do what we’re able to do? We’re bringing 40 full-paying young men at a university, that’s a tremendous asset. They won’t make up that money in lost meals.”

Dilfer said roster limits will impact high school recruiting and development through the continuation of the trend of coaches first seeking veteran players through the transfer portal. Roster limits will cause many walk-on candidates at SEC and other major-conference schools to seek opportunities at lower-level institutions, but that doesn’t mean they’d be scholarship players there, either.

“Every once in a while, there are NIL walk-ons that are difference-making players at our level,” Dilfer said. “But your typical guy who goes to Georgia to be the seventh quarterback, we’re recruiting better than that.”

In addition, the likelihood that many power-conference schools will fill their rosters with 105 scholarship-level athletes peels away perhaps 15-20 players who normally would have competed for Group of 5 teams.

“I think it hurts us more than helps us,” Dilfer said. “We fight hard tooth and nail for the 78th through 85th guy at an SEC school. Now there’s no chance they’re not going to turn down let’s say 35 grand to go to their dream school to be a third-string guy instead of coming to UAB or Memphis to be a difference maker.”

“Right now, if I’m an early high school enrollee and I haven’t committed, I’d be nervous as heck,” Silverfield said.

Baseball

Former Georgia and Kent State baseball coach Scott Stricklin thinks 34 is a “workable number.”

“Forty just allowed you to have some extra guys, some extra arms, a fourth or fifth catcher,” Stricklin said. “It just gave you a little more wiggle room, more margin for error.”

But upping the scholarship limit could create a huge divide in college baseball, Stricklin thinks. When he was at Kent State, that school and many other mid-majors struggled to hit the 11.7 scholarship limit. Stricklin thinks the new system could lead to baseball becoming what football already is, split into FBS and FCS.

And while it’s not automatic that bigger schools will use all 34 available scholarships every year, they will likely feel public pressure to get close.

“If you’re in the ACC, you’re in the SEC, if you’re not fully funding your scholarships in that sport, you’ve sent a message that this isn’t important for us. And other schools use that in recruiting,” Stricklin said.

The arrangement will make baseball coaches happy but create headaches and unknowns for athletic departments.

“It’s been 11.7 for 35-plus years,” Stricklin said. “And we’ve been asking for it to be higher for 35-plus years. Now it’s finally going to happen. But I don’t think anyone really knows what are going to be the after effects of this.”

Other sports

For most Big Ten schools, baseball is important but there’s little separation between it and many other non-revenue sports on campus.

Commissioner Tony Petitti has pushed for autonomy among his conference members that will allow them to prioritize which sports require the most scholarship support. Nebraska women’s volleyball, for instance, generated $2.2 million in ticket sales during the 2023 fiscal year, according to financial documents obtained by The Athletic. In the same year, Minnesota men’s ice hockey made $3.75 million in ticket revenue, and Iowa men’s wrestling sold out its season for $1.22 million. All three are massively popular among their individual fan bases.

“Put football and men’s and women’s basketball off to the side, but you think of the strength in volleyball on the women’s side. It has been remarkable,” Petitti said last week. “You think about wrestling at Penn State and Iowa. You think about hockey at some of the places in the Big Ten.

“We’ve got institutions that make those decisions about what’s important on their campus, what’s important to their alums, tradition. It’s not clear cut.”

Women’s volleyball roster limits are set at 18, up from 12 scholarships during the current fiscal year, and many Big Ten volleyball programs will maximize those additional resources. Iowa now has 30 scholarships available for both men’s and women’s wrestling, up from 9.9 and 10, respectively. Ice hockey rosters for men and women are now up to 26 from their previous scholarship count of 18.

Athletic departments

Title IX compliance remains a paramount issue for all athletic departments: Scholarships must be set according to male-female enrollment ratios, according to federal law. Should football or baseball programs provide scholarships up to the roster limit, they must be offset by providing the same number of additional scholarships (42.3) for female sports or reducing scholarships from the pool of other men’s sports. That could lead to some campuses eliminating men’s sports or perhaps adding new women’s teams.

But departments are not required to fill every scholarship. Like in baseball or wrestling, scholarships can be split in every sport moving forward, which could limit the Title IX impact.

“In some ways, you’re sort of rebuilding this whole plane while you’re trying to fly it,” Iowa athletics director Beth Goetz said. “I think those are conversations in football specifically, but across all sports, we’re really going to be talking a lot about what’s most impactful for our program. Is it in scholarships? Is it in that NIL payment component and making sure that every dollar that we put into the system is going to need to have a clear ROI (return on investment)? And that obviously has a lot to do with how it’s going to impact winning.”

“The football number, I don’t think that’s going to drive a lot of other changes,” Petitti said.

Combined with the revenue-sharing structure in place for 2025-26, schools will look to save costs where they can. One idea is for the NCAA to end the 16-sport sponsorship mandate for FBS schools, which is 14 for other Division I programs. Lowering the mandate, or getting rid of it, could allow some schools to keep their athletic departments afloat, though as the pandemic showed, schools risk political and legal blowback when they openly consider cutting sports.

Another option for some schools is to keep all their sports but not provide scholarships for some and instead fund players through NIL, revenue sharing, financial aid, whatever combination gets it done. And then there’s the long-term fix of a separate governance structure controlling only football, which could alleviate some issues but create others along the way.

One Power 4 administrator said there was “no doubt” the settlement will lead to a reduction in resources beyond football, men’s and women’s basketball, and niche sports for individual schools. Others aren’t as sure, and it’s with that uncertainty that schools will work to find solutions for their new reality.

“My takeaway from many months of conversations is that in recent years, it’s been the best time ever to be a student-athlete across the board for a variety of reasons — schools have poured a ton of resources into the student-athlete experience, plus NIL on top of it. Once this takes hold, that will only apply to certain sports,” the administrator said. “Schools are going to have to navigate the non-rev programs that have one or just a few big donors who have become accustomed to seeing revenue from football help with resources. That model is headed for an ugly end. But it is what the market will dictate.”

—The Athletic’s Chris Vannini contributed reporting.

(Photo: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)