Roster Limits

Roster limits cap how many athletes a team may carry. They replaced sport-by-sport scholarship limits for schools that opted into the House settlement, effective July 1, 2025. Football is capped at 105, men’s and women’s basketball at 15, baseball at 34 and softball at 25, with limits set for every other sport.

Q. How is this different from scholarship limits?

The old system limited how much athletic aid a school could give in each sport. The new system limits how many athletes are on the team, and a school may fund aid for every one of them if it chooses.

Q. Does this mean more scholarships or fewer?

More available scholarships, but fewer roster spots. Schools can now fully fund a much larger share of their rosters, while overall roster sizes shrank, by an estimated 13,000 spots across Division I.

Q. What happened to athletes cut to comply?

Many qualify as designated student-athletes, which exempts them from counting toward roster limits for the remainder of their eligibility.

Q. Do walk-ons still exist?

Yes, but they now count against the roster limit exactly as a scholarship athlete does. That changed how programs use them, and is a large part of why roster sizes fell.

Q. Who does this apply to?

Schools that opted into the settlement. Others still operate under the old scholarship limits, as do Division II and NAIA programs under their own rules.