NCAA approves one-year waiver for expansion of signing class limit

The NCAA Division-I council on Tuesday approved a one-year waiver that will expand recruiting class signing limits, therefore allowing schools to replace student-athletes that leave for the transfer portal in the first term. The NCAA announcement states that the Division-I council approved the waiver; however, “decisions are not final until the end of tomorrow’s meeting.”

“We believe schools should have temporary flexibility to help address possible roster depletion due to transfers,” NCAA Division-I Football Oversight Committee chair and Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour said. “This one-year waiver enables schools to properly utilize their scholarship limitations.”

Current NCAA policy limits football programs to a 25-person recruiting class. The waiver for a one-time exception to the rule, which would take effect in the current 2022 recruiting cycle, would provide schools both with more flexibility in its recruiting classes and an opportunity to replace student-athletes that leave the university for the transfer portal.

Under the NCAA’s one-year rule, schools can sign a recruiting class of 25 student-athletes, plus one additional spot for each scholarship player that enters the portal; however, the additional spots are capped at seven. For example, if a school loses two players to the transfer portal, it gains two spots in its recruiting class and can sign 27 high schoolers, rather than 25. If a school loses ten players to the transfer portal, it can only gain the maximum of seven spots, so the recruiting class may expand to 32 new signees.

The NCAA has outlined a few minor conditions that must be met for the class to expand. Namely, each student-athlete must enter the transfer portal academically eligible in order for the recruiting class to expand, and the student-athlete must enter the transfer portal, rather than step away from the sport as a result of injury or personal choice.

Each university has 85 football scholarships to divide amongst its student-athletes. However, prior to the NCAA’s temporary resolution, recruiting classes could be no larger than 25. With the proliferation of the NCAA transfer portal, many programs have fallen — or would soon fall — under the 85-person scholarship limit, and they would be unable to replace those that enter the portal due to the cap on class size. The NCAA hopes that immediate action in the form of expanding the 25-person recruiting classes can prevent teams from dwindling in size.

Sports Illustrated reported in February that the average Power Five program lost 8.5 scholarship players to the transfer portal, while the average Group of Five program lost 6.3. The NCAA hopes that by expanding recruiting class size, teams can maintain a healthy number of active players, while also encouraging coaches to fill out their rosters primarily through high school recruiting rather than transfer activity.