Scholarship limits are gone. Roster caps are in. Welcome, yet again, to a whole new world of college athletics.
Monday, the NCAA’s Division I Board of Directors formally adopted one of the final components of the House Settlement, which was formally stamped for approval June 6 by U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken in her Oakland, California, courtroom.
No more 85-scholarship limits in football. No more 11.7 — 11.7? — scholarship limit in NCAA baseball. On and on.
In the place of these long-held numbers, the NCAA is, in many cases, opening wide the floodgates for the haves in various NCAA sports to, well, have more.
Football programs can have 105 fully funded scholarships, Baseball? Well, rosters can triple in scholarship numbers — if member schools choose to do so.
“With the court’s approval of the House settlement,” college sports are entering a new era of increased benefits for college athletes,” said Tim Sands, chair of the board and president at Virginia Tech. “Today’s vote to codify the roster provisions of the settlement formally removes limits on scholarships for schools that opt in, dramatically increasing the potential available scholarships for student-athletes across all sports in Division I.”
There’s more. Football programs now can give partial — or, equivalency — scholarships to members.
For example, as first reported here several months ago, Notre Dame is moving to fund 95 football scholarships as part of that institution’s overall decision to add 19 new athletics scholarships across all sports in 2025-26.
Three other Power Conference general managers, who asked their schools to not be named, also told FootballScoop that they would fund “at least 95” scholarships moving forward.
Of additional note: increased scholarships moving forward count against the $20.5 million revenue-sharing distribution as part of the House Settlement.
Therefore, multiple programs who spoke to FootballScoop are increasing funding up to 95 scholarships but not to the entire 105-scholarships limit in order to take that additional scholarship money and reinvest it in their rosters as part of the revenue-sharing disbursement.
In other words, if a school has to claim, for example, $800,000 of revenue-sharing funds for adding 10 additional scholarships, schools are pausing at that number rather than adding 20 additional scholarships at an example-cost of $1.6 million.
