NCAA Scholarship Limits Dramatically Increasing
If you haven’t heard the NCAA’s latest change to collegiate athletics…it’s a pretty big one. Starting during the 2025-26 academic year, the limit of scholarships allowed to college athletes is going to dramatically increase. The rule affects every sport in the NCAA, but especially basketball, football, and baseball. Let’s break down how the NCAA is doing this, and what it means for teams going forward.
Let’s first look at the scholarship limits that are being dramatically increased. As mentioned above, the most notable sports include basketball, football, and baseball among others. Football previously had 85 scholarships to offer to players…now, they have 105. Baseball went from 11.7 scholarships (the .7 is a partial scholarship) to 35. Volleyball and Softball, which both previously offered 12 scholarships, went up to 18 and 25 scholarships, respectively. All of these sports are experiencing a serious increase, to the point where there are more full-ride scholarships available than actual players on a roster. In essence, scholarship limits to offer to players have been eliminated.
However, this doesn’t mean that every player in college will be on a full-ride scholarship. Schools get to make their own rules in terms of what they offer, meaning that they can offer partial scholarships (every sport can now offer these) and walk-on spots. Just because teams have all of this money doesn’t mean they are going to use all of it.
Scholarships might be virtually limitless, but spots on a collegiate roster are not. The final roster sizes for collegiate sports will likely be included in the long-form agreement/settlement of the three antitrust cases that are being settled. So no, college rosters can’t balloon to a ridiculous size and have all their athletes on scholarship.
Unfortunately, as awesome as this all sounds, there are downsides to the new arrangement. Schools don’t have infinite amounts of money (even though it seems like they do sometimes). As a result, schools have to pick and choose where their new scholarship money goes, as they can’t give every sport the same level of attention. This doesn’t bother football, basketball, and baseball programs, but for others, this poses a threat. Larger sports such as Track and Field/Cross Country and Swimming may see a reduction in the amount of scholarships their programs offer, or even less revenue being dedicated towards the program as a whole. The new $3-$7 million that schools will be receiving will be used to bolster already great programs that bring in revenue, not lift up the sports that bring in little to no revenue for the school. Alas, that’s the business of collegiate athletics.