College baseball scholarship limit to increase by 20+

[T-Dog]

This is gonna be a big deal for App State and the Sun Belt. The fully-funding scholarship goalposts are gonna get moved back even more.

https://d1baseball.com/ncaa/college-bas ... s-nearing/

Now? Division I Baseball is on the cusp of being in an incredible position from a scholarship standpoint. This week, Sankey confirmed to Yahoo! Sports’ Ross Dellenger, in this piece, that Division I Baseball is expected to settle on a roster limit between 32 and 35 players, which is a decrease from the 40-man roster that programs will enter the 2025 campaign with. That reality will make the evaluation process even more critical for coaches. However, the most important piece of news from Sankey is about the scholarship limit or lack thereof.

Division I Baseball is expected to permit programs to offer full scholarships to everyone on their roster. So, if the roster is set at 35 players, all 35 could ideally be on a full scholarship – quite a contrast from the current setup, which allows for 11.7 scholarships to be spread over a 40-man roster. Baseball will evolve from an equivalency to a head-count sport like football.

Looks to be in place by 2026. And it would turn college baseball into a head-county sport, which is one that you must offer a player either a full scholarship or none. Other head-count sports are FBS football, men's and women's basketball, volleyball and women's tennis.

Currently, the 11.7 scholarships can be divided up between (I believe) 30-35 players. There's a hard limit of players who can be on some form of scholarship because coaches use to give book money to 30+ freshmen every year and they would try out for the team, with less than half making it.

Article says the Sun Belt will want to keep up with the joneses, so this could add 20 more athletic scholarships to App State Baseball. Which then begs the question of will there need to be Title IX compliance and 20 more women's scholarships? Will App State even do this?

[Stonewall]

Title IX , yes.

[Saint3333]

What’s the minimum number of sports we have to offer? Any proposed changes to that with the NIL/TP changes?

This is another way the power programs will separate themselves, raising costs in non-revenue sports.

[311neers]

https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... ent-talks/

So a P5 will be able to fund 34 scholarships now, making it even more difficult for the little guys to compete. Someone smarter than me can probably describe all of this better, but will we even be able to fund more than what we've been doing in terms of scholarships (11.7)? Allowing 22 scholarships seems like a lot of coin for us but a drop in the bucket for a Texas or pretty much any decent p5 program.

[AppSt94]

It’s more than just baseball apparently.

[BTK2000]

This is going to devastate mid major sports IMO.

The goalpost to fully fund scholarships is now $1.5million more per year as App wasn’t meeting that goal already. This does nothing but allow major programs to hoard more for themselves

[311neers]

Trying to find the pro's here.

One PRO could be that the roster limits have shrunk from 40 to 34. Those excess players that essentially won't have a home at the P5 level could come to App and now get a little scholarship coin. We need to pour into baseball now more than ever. We're on the cusp and have room to improve our park and facilities.

[AppSt94]

This effectively eliminates the walk-ons. I don’t see it moving the needle that much one way or another. Outside of the cost of funding the 73 additional scholarships, which isn’t cheap, it’s not going to change the dispersal of talent that much.

[Appmountaineers19]

If App wants to fully fund baseball with scholarships it will be 1.1 million per year. Which is more than men's basketball, men's T&F, wrestling, and men's golf combined in FY 2023. (per 247) yikes!

[311neers]

If App wants to fully fund baseball with scholarships it will be 1.1 million per year. Which is more than men's basketball, men's T&F, wrestling, and men's golf combined in FY 2023. (per 247) yikes!

We probably can't fully fund 34 scholarships but we should be able to get at least a few more than the current 11.7 and spread it throughout all 34 players. Maybe get 15-20 scholarships and distribute evenly throughout the whole roster. Who knows, maybe a big donor will fully fund all 34!

[AppSt94]

If App wants to fully fund baseball with scholarships it will be 1.1 million per year. Which is more than men's basketball, men's T&F, wrestling, and men's golf combined in FY 2023. (per 247) yikes!

We probably can't fully fund 34 scholarships but we should be able to get at least a few more than the current 11.7 and spread it throughout all 34 players. Maybe get 15-20 scholarships and distribute evenly throughout the whole roster. Who knows, maybe a big donor will fully fund all 34!

If you are a head count sport, then one scholarship per player. They can’t be split.

[311neers]

If App wants to fully fund baseball with scholarships it will be 1.1 million per year. Which is more than men's basketball, men's T&F, wrestling, and men's golf combined in FY 2023. (per 247) yikes!

We probably can't fully fund 34 scholarships but we should be able to get at least a few more than the current 11.7 and spread it throughout all 34 players. Maybe get 15-20 scholarships and distribute evenly throughout the whole roster. Who knows, maybe a big donor will fully fund all 34!

If you are a head count sport, then one scholarship per player. They can’t be split.

I thought baseball was always allowed to spread the 11.7 scholarships over the full roster if they wanted too. We had numerous kids getting 33% scholarships for baseball, I don’t think anyone had a full 100% ride. Seems to be the case now with the new rule as well.

https://d1baseball.com/ncaa/college-bas ... s-nearing/

[Appmountaineers19]

Essentially the little guys/gals are screwed. Schools are going to have to decide what teams they want to be NCAA and what team will go to club/rec.

[Appmountaineers19]

If App wants to fully fund baseball with scholarships it will be 1.1 million per year. Which is more than men's basketball, men's T&F, wrestling, and men's golf combined in FY 2023. (per 247) yikes!

We probably can't fully fund 34 scholarships but we should be able to get at least a few more than the current 11.7 and spread it throughout all 34 players. Maybe get 15-20 scholarships and distribute evenly throughout the whole roster. Who knows, maybe a big donor will fully fund all 34!

If you are a head count sport, then one scholarship per player. They can’t be split.

I thought baseball was always allowed to spread the 11.7 scholarships over the full roster if they wanted too. We had numerous kids getting 33% scholarships for baseball, I don’t think anyone had a full 100% ride. Seems to be the case now with the new rule as well.

https://d1baseball.com/ncaa/college-bas ... s-nearing/

Sounds like it. Thank goodness. I was with my old teammate/ roommate this past weekend and his son plays at ETSU. He was telling me ETSU's budget is less than APP which I think is 1.5 million. Said they didn't take one plane trip all year.

[311neers]

If App wants to fully fund baseball with scholarships it will be 1.1 million per year. Which is more than men's basketball, men's T&F, wrestling, and men's golf combined in FY 2023. (per 247) yikes!

We probably can't fully fund 34 scholarships but we should be able to get at least a few more than the current 11.7 and spread it throughout all 34 players. Maybe get 15-20 scholarships and distribute evenly throughout the whole roster. Who knows, maybe a big donor will fully fund all 34!

If you are a head count sport, then one scholarship per player. They can’t be split.

I thought baseball was always allowed to spread the 11.7 scholarships over the full roster if they wanted too. We had numerous kids getting 33% scholarships for baseball, I don’t think anyone had a full 100% ride. Seems to be the case now with the new rule as well.

https://d1baseball.com/ncaa/college-bas ... s-nearing/

Sounds like it. Thank goodness. I was with my old teammate/ roommate this past weekend and his son plays at ETSU. He was telling me ETSU's budget is less than APP which I think is 1.5 million. Said they didn't take one plane trip all year.

That’s tough. Thank goodness we’re in the SunBelt for baseball. That’s going to help pull us along big time. We’re heading in the right trajectory, just need to find a few more scholarships because you know Coastal/UL/Southern/JMU/SouthernMiss will be able to fund a good amount.

[Appmountaineers19]

I forgot to finish my thought. It's probable it's going to hurt APP but man can imagine how it will affect the smaller teams in these smaller conferences.

[AppSt94]

If App wants to fully fund baseball with scholarships it will be 1.1 million per year. Which is more than men's basketball, men's T&F, wrestling, and men's golf combined in FY 2023. (per 247) yikes!

We probably can't fully fund 34 scholarships but we should be able to get at least a few more than the current 11.7 and spread it throughout all 34 players. Maybe get 15-20 scholarships and distribute evenly throughout the whole roster. Who knows, maybe a big donor will fully fund all 34!

If you are a head count sport, then one scholarship per player. They can’t be split.

I thought baseball was always allowed to spread the 11.7 scholarships over the full roster if they wanted too. We had numerous kids getting 33% scholarships for baseball, I don’t think anyone had a full 100% ride. Seems to be the case now with the new rule as well.

https://d1baseball.com/ncaa/college-bas ... s-nearing/

“Was always” is not necessarily the same as “will soon be”. If they keep the model that you can split them among the 34 guys, then great. But that’s doesn’t mean that you can afford to create those scholarships. Your initial point about adding a few guys would be beneficial is a good thing. But where is App going to find the $180,000 to fund 6 additional scholarships for a sport that doesn’t make money?

[Saint3333]

The needle it moves is before we were recruiting in theory athlete #1,000 in basketball (~80 programs at 13 scholarships) to athlete #1,200 at 15 scholarships per team.

That is on top of a 15-20% increase in the overall scholarships for a program.

Remember programs like Alabama led to the 85 scholarship player limit because they were recruiting players to ride the bench so others couldn't sign them.

Now the transfer portal helps in that regard, but this clearly is to the advantage of the deep pocketed programs.

What is the last rule change that benefitted the G5? The one playoff spot crumb...

[hapapp]

If App wants to fully fund baseball with scholarships it will be 1.1 million per year. Which is more than men's basketball, men's T&F, wrestling, and men's golf combined in FY 2023. (per 247) yikes!

We probably can't fully fund 34 scholarships but we should be able to get at least a few more than the current 11.7 and spread it throughout all 34 players. Maybe get 15-20 scholarships and distribute evenly throughout the whole roster. Who knows, maybe a big donor will fully fund all 34!

If you are a head count sport, then one scholarship per player. They can’t be split.

I believe all sports are going to be considered equivalency.

[AppSt94]

If App wants to fully fund baseball with scholarships it will be 1.1 million per year. Which is more than men's basketball, men's T&F, wrestling, and men's golf combined in FY 2023. (per 247) yikes!

We probably can't fully fund 34 scholarships but we should be able to get at least a few more than the current 11.7 and spread it throughout all 34 players. Maybe get 15-20 scholarships and distribute evenly throughout the whole roster. Who knows, maybe a big donor will fully fund all 34!

If you are a head count sport, then one scholarship per player. They can’t be split.

I believe all sports are going to be considered equivalency.

They certainly could be. Football and basketball both teams are head count. The increase in the number of scholarships for volleyball and softball are more than the current rosters show.