New Rules Affecting Roster Sizes and Athletic Scholarships

College - Mens
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I believe they would have 4 years but not sure exactly, if they practice with the club the second half of the year I don’t think that would count towards eligibility. So their first year of 4 would be their sophomore year. I am just guessing an AD or coach should know.
That being said, there are not that many teams with giant rosters. lots of unranked teams have 16-18 so if a kid really wants to play in college they will have to start studying roster sizes and talk to schools that they have better odds with. After all of these 5th year and grad students move on I think the game will get better. I did some quick math and not counting the IVY’s in the top 18 D1 Schools (left out Navy and AF as well) there are potentially 53 spots on 15 teams. Some like UCSB and UC Davis have to cut deep to bring anyone new in as they are one over before bringing in a new class.

School 2024 roster size sr/grads 2025 open spots
UCLA 28 5 1
USC 26 7 5
Stanford 25 6 5
Pep 28 6 2
UOP 36 17 5
UCI 27 7 4
Fordham 25 10 9
CAL 32 9 1
Princeton 27 10 N/A
Long B 28 7 3
SJ state 25 7 6
UCSB 28 3 -1
UCSD 29 9 4
Harvard 17 4 N/A
Santa CL 27 4 1
LMU 23 4 5
UC Davis 29 4 -1
Brown 20 2 N/A
CBU 24 4 4
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42

Some of the above teams like Davis have lots of RS seniors (5), so some of those will decide to graduate and move on.

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Great information for parent and kids. I assume the calculation does not include spots for players who already are committed for 2025!

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No not included. So some are already over or they already know of guys not returning. Pep being one example of having 2 spots but 3 recruits according to the message boards. However, many teams have 5 goalies on the roster, Pep has 4, I would have to guess those days are over, how many do you need? Princeton has 1, that is not enough. I think you will start to see 3 on the D1 teams, You might see more transfer goalies as well, D2, D3, JC can develop them and the standouts could get spots on D1 teams junior season.

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from what i understand, the new rules can be opted in or out of. Opting out means you can continue as you were, 4.5 scholarships - Opting in and you can give up to 24 (or less) scholarships and maintain 24 rostered kids.

So Davis, SB, UCSD and can continue as they have and a school like Pep can (opt in), trim down and throw the money around ('cuz they have it) a bit more

i can be totally off but that is how i’ve come to understand it.

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Very helpful. Thank you! It would be great to see this for the women, too. For the opt-ins, women’s WP scholarships will likely rise in 2025 to balance the rise in football scholarships, while the men will remain 4.5 or fall.

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yes but my understanding is that the entire school has to opt in or out so you cant opt out for WP but opt in for basketball.

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SDfan is correct and I suspect UCSD and Davis will both opt out of the settlement. Not sure about UCSB.
This was discussed in the thread below.

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I agree completely with this. I’d like to note that many of the D1 players losing their roster spots will not play if it means going to a smaller east coast D1. If, someway somehow, other schools add D1 polo programs, then this may be the best thing thats happened to the sport but that seems like it will never happen. I think less oppurtunities to go D1 will definitely dissuade high school kids from going to USA wp events in hopes of getting recruited.
I see D2 and D3 teams getting flooded with D1 players that got cut because of this new rule.

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Do conferences opt in/opt out or individual schools? Seems like it would be up to the conference not individual schools.

Current NCAA rules limit scholarships not roster sizes. Currently, roster sizes are determined by individual athletic departments/coaches, not the NCAA. Can’t the NCAA increase scholarships without limiting roster size?

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AFAIK, its up to each school not per conference and no I do not believe you cannot increase scholarships without limiting roster size in the current ruling.

Also note: its per school I believe not per sport.

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IMHO

I believe the scholarships available will now match roster size so that student athletes all have opportunity to be “paid”. If roster size does not match scholarship count, then non-scholarship athletes could have claims against the NCAA and the school and we start this all over again.

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Historic House-NCAA settlement leaving hundreds of Olympic sport athletes in peril

New NCAA Roster Limits: The Death of the Walk-On Athlete

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/new-ncaa-roster-limits-the-death-of-the-walk-on-athlete/ar-AA1tcOjl?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=7cabb64ba3bc4ee1a129da230065c3fd&ei=53

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I don’t think this will mark the “death of the walk-on”, but rather will end schools doing “favors” for kids. If you’re the 4th string center/catcher/midfielder on a team that has 30 players, you’re already not playing, so what’s the difference. All this will do is force you to look at schools where your skills actually fit instead of that big name school that makes your parents feel good telling their friends about.

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To be fair, the article (title) may be a bit misleading. I think it’s referring to the death of the walk on for revenue sports. Football was 85 “full-scholarships only” and (according to the article) approximately 128 roster spots. With roster sizes of 105 it is assumed that at the Power 5 conference level for sure that they will fund all those fully - a net gain of 20 men’s scholarships. Again, that is the assumption, which I’m guessing is a fair one since it would be hard to justify to fan bases or whomever, that your rival is doing that and you’re not. Nonetheless, with 105 fully funded scholarships, there would be no room for walk-ons at that school.

For non-revenue sports it’s always been different. My guess is you see a lot of the men’s non revenue sports go to zero scholarships if they don’t cut programs altogether. There are only a few, even in P5, that can operate as before. On the women’s side it will be different as well because of title IX. Could be a boon for women’s polo though!

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not sure if you have all listened to yesterdays WPW podcast. At the end of it Kirk touches on the new roster limits and echoed what most of us had expected.

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And the death of coaches doing “favors” for their friends or people who can “help” the program.

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This article on Santa Clara women’s soccer is informative. Amateur sports will continue to get squeezed, including schools with football programs due to revenue sharing.

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I haven’t listened to the podcasts, but read the articles others have posted, thank you to the posters. This is what I’ve summarized:

Lawsuit started by ASU swimmer likely just wanting to get paid by speedo/tyr and keep scholarship/eligibility (I.e. Phelps and Ledecky wanted to get paid for olympic success and still participate in college athletics).

NCAA, large conferences, lawyers- turned it into roster cuts for participating schools to reallocate scholarships and profits to football and basketball players.

It’s clear from large conference ADs, many mens Olympic sports will turn club. In no world, zero, will roster limits = scholarships for non rev sports, even for USC and Stanford because the funding (revenue) is now distributed to football and basketball players. The school would have to really love the sport and find profitably in its success to fund more scholarships.

Women’s sports could be spared due to title IX but with flag football starting there won’t be a large increase in scholarships for water polo. There is a lawsuit starting from student athletes who have already been negatively affected by roster limits. Roster limits could be grandfathered in, per the judge. The judge doesn’t want settlement to take away from student athletes (ha). She said people generally don’t like when they lose things. However, the ADs are using wordplay—stating we keep the sports but they won’t be the same as they are today. Alabama AD said it best—the revenue of football and basketball ($40 million) pay for the other 36 sports. This could be why they capped the revenue sharing at arbitrary $23m. So there is a small budget to pay for other sports. Will your sport be saved? This is where sport CEOs come in to lobby for their sports.

Could Speedo, mizzuno, usa water polo, us olympic committee etc all start funding olympic sports at certain schools? They need those sports in college to get kids involved at younger age groups for their company to survive. There’s no other realistic way to get $1m annually in funding—other than students voting to increase their dues to provide funding.

Hopefully, non football schools stay the same (UCSD, cal state Fullerton, UCSB, UCI etc). Their funding is in place from school dues already voted on years ago by the student population.

If I’m wrong on this please let me know.

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I think it’s the death of college coaches period! Their salaries are the first to go.