Greg Sankey updates timeline on potential changes to aid caps, roster size

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey provided an update on the timeline for potential changes to scholarship caps and roster size for NCAA programs. In addition to his role as conference commissioner, Sankey is also the co-chairman for the Division I Transformation Committee, which is charged with overhauling rules in response to the issues that continually challenge college athletics.

The amount of scholarship players a team can have is one of the concerns surrounding college football of late, thanks to the rise of both the transfer portal and NIL. Sankey said at the SEC Spring Meetings in Destin, Florida, this week that though the initial deadline to make a decision was set for August, it has now been extended into January.

“We are in the process of considering the background, the status and a number of alternatives,” the commissioner stated. “Initially, not for me or my co-chair Julie Cromer, the message was by August the transformation committee would wrap up. We actually went to the board early on and asked, ‘Do you need transformation and do you really have to have all of this by August?’ Some of these issues are decades old. They said, ‘We want you to be efficient with time but understand you need to be thorough and more may be required.’ I actually went back in April and we got a longer runway until January of next year. That allows us time to think about all the impacts. Without stating whether scholarship numbers will or won’t change, we can think about considering around financial aid and around the support of student athletes. That support of student athletes issue is front and center for us, and we’ve got some time to figure it out.”

The NCAA already announced on May 18 that it would remove the annual signing and initial counter limits for scholarships for the next two years. Previously, teams were limited to signing 25 incoming freshman to FBS scholarships. Now they will be able to bring in as many recruits as they like. Teams will still have a scholarship limit for their roster as a whole, which is set at 85.

The reasoning behind this change was directly linked to the transfer portal, which saw more than 2,000 players switch schools during the 2021-22 cycle. The Football Oversight Committee will collect and review recruiting data during these two years, as well as monitor transfer trends to inform potential future rule changes.

“Some schools hadn’t given out all their scholarships and felt constrained by the annual limit,” Council chair Shane Lyons, athletics director at West Virginia, said. “This temporary change provides schools more flexibility and adds opportunities for incoming and current student-athletes to receive aid.”

For now, it seems both Greg Sankey and the NCAA are willing to take the wait-and-see approach when it comes to scholarship caps and roster size. After this season, we’ll have more clarity on whether the 85-player roster limit will be increased, or simply remain the same.