Greg Sankey on what he says to coaches about potential roster caps: 'Slow down, guys'

SEC Spring Meetings kick off this week as the conference’s biggest leaders and decision-makers convene in Destin, Florida to discuss the future of what a majority regard as the strongest conference across college athletics.

Spring Meetings are always loaded with intriguing topics and storylines, which has increased significantly more in today’s evolving college athletics landscape with the introduction of name, image, and likeness. With the current House v. NCAA settlement in particular breeding various talking points like revenue sharing with student-athletes amongst others.

Another topic that has arisen from the settlement has been roster caps, calling for an end to scholarship limits and instead putting a roster cap on teams depending on the sport. And at Spring Meetings, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey was asked what he would tell the conference’s football coaches if they had concerns about potential roster caps in the future.

“I’ll tell you exactly what I’d say, I’ve not talked to our coaches about that other than individually to say hey, slow down guys,” Sankey said.

“So we had a meeting three weeks ago, some of you have sources, that’s great. I think it’s a bit of a threat, a danger that we can’t have a conversation about concepts that don’t populate themselves outside the room. So then that provokes a reaction.”

The current scholarship limit for college football sits at 85, but most rosters hold around 120 or more players through walk-ons, which is seen for nearly every collegiate sport to a certain extent.

But the House v. NCAA settlement will call for a roster limit instead of a scholarship limit, which has various implications depending on the sport. Especially in football where non-scholarship players are often used as scout team players exclusively in practice, also providing valuable depth and sometimes eventually earning scholarships after working their way onto the field. With talks of a potential low roster cap limit creating some uneasiness amongst collegiate head coaches.

“I know other conferences have discussed it, coaches have then texted our coaches, they get fired up, and we said just wait. We’re gonna have a conversation, that’s where it is, that’s a concept,” Sankey said. “And understand that football captures the attention, but we have 21 championship sports, all of which need to have a level of conversation about that roster piece.”

Roster caps would impact each sport differently, likely not playing a huge role in sports like basketball where teams are smaller in size and are largely dominated by full-ride scholarship athletes. But in sports like baseball where rosters are a little bit larger and scholarships are often time partial, schools with larger bankrolls and NIL collectives could be at an advantage. As it will be fascinating to see how roster caps and other changes become in the aftermath of the House v. NCAA settlement.