The NCAA’s Proposed 2025-26 Roster Limits
Every year, about 1 in every 57 high school athletes go on to play in college at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division 1 level. However, starting in the 2025-2026 academic year, D1 opportunities (not necessarily out of high school) will decrease by at least 4,739. The change has to do with a ruling in House v NCAA that allows schools to begin paying athletes directly. As a result of this ruling, the NCAA is considering limiting rosters in Division One sports to avoid future antitrust lawsuits surrounding the distribution of scholarships, direct payments, and NIL deals on college teams.
According to ESPN, the proposal will limit rosters by sport. For example, football rosters will be limited to 105 players, baseball rosters to 34, men’s and women’s soccer rosters to 28, men’s wrestling to 30, men’s basketball to 15, men’s lacrosse to 48, men’s golf to 9, and men’s hockey to 26 (other sports not listed). However, some sports roster limits are larger than current roster sizes, meaning that NCAA Division 1 opportunities will potentially be reduced by 10,000 if these sports do not expand to fill their roster limits.
Sports like football and baseball are disproportionately affected by these limits, where rosters will be decreasing by at least 10%. As a result, some coaches of these sports are concerned that roster limits will diminish their abilities to practice, scrimmage, and fill in the spots of injured players. Furthermore, since teams will now be able to offer scholarships to all players, the era of the walk-on is essentially over. In football, where around 9% of players are injured every year, scout team (a team mostly consisting of 3rd or 4th string players that simulate opposing teams during practice) players may begin to fill the roles of injured players more often. This could make it more difficult to run practices since former scout team players will no longer be able to play for the scout team, and there may not be another player to fill their role.
As for baseball, effective practice is a concern even without injuries. Due to the nature of the pitching position, players can sometimes need 3-5 days of rest after pitching in a bullpen, game, or scrimmage. Specifically, in the preseason, if a pitcher’s practice is held where most of a team’s pitchers throw a bullpen, the team now is without pitchers for a few days and therefore will not be able to scrimmage while the pitchers are recovering, taking away from valuable preseason practice time.
Another effect of D1 roster limits is a trickle-down effect. Now that some players with D1 talent will need to be cut, these players will likely try to find a new team to play on at a lower level. This means that D1 bench players will likely transition to the D2, D3, or JUCO levels, heightening the level of play at these levels, and possibly even improving funding for non-D1 athletic departments. However, for high school athletes with D1 aspirations, these roster limits and the trickle-down effects may lead to a new road to D1, where an athlete first spends a few years at a JUCO, D2, or D3 college, and later transfers to a D1 college after they already have some college experience.
Although roster limits are not yet finalized, it is true that college sports are headed in a new direction in order to allow student-athletes to be compensated for playing their sports.
