The NCAA has always had some pretty stupid, if not archaic, rules in its governance of college sports which may make this one of the all-time duh! sentences ever written.
But there was one that always stood above the rest when it came to scholarship limitations. Football and basketball always seemed to be a sliding scale when it came to player numbers as the NCAA struggled to make things as equitable as possible.
And then there was college baseball.
For years, programs were held to this ridiculous number of 11.7 scholarships available for members of the team. Divide it up however you’d like, but that’s all you got. Good luck, we’re all counting you.
Even though their hands were forced, give the NCAA credit for finally doing something about it. No more 11.7; the new number is 34.
Kind of.
Legislation has been changed that will keep college baseball rosters at a solid 34 players. Considering some schools would have been carrying about a dozen more than that, it seems like a pretty severe cut.
Eventually it will be, but not yet.
Those players who were already on rosters have been grandfathered in to allow programs to avoid having to outright cut players who had already played at their school. “If they had done that, think about how many players would have been set free,” Louisiana Tech coach Lane Burroughs said. “You would have had to cut them on the spot and they’d have no place to play.”
Instead, college can now put a “DSA” tag (Designated Student Athlete) on players already on the roster and not count against the limit of 34. For example, Tech put that tag on all of its freshmen. “You have to give it some thought (on who to DSA),” Burroughs said. “But we thought it would just be a whole lot easier to do it that way.”
Though it might seem as something of a demotion, it really isn’t. In fact, it actually has a benefit for the player. Once they are DSAed, they carry that designation with them throughout their career. If he transfers to another college, he still doesn’t count against the player limit of 34, making him more attracting as a potential transfer.
Then there is the matter of funding for the players. Without getting too deep into the weeds, program have various sources of income to allot to the players (instead of scholarships in the old days). The range for a mid-major program such as Tech might be somewhere from $700k to $1 million. At LSU, that might be upwards of $5 million.
Rather than figure out who gets what part of a scholarship, now they just decide who gets how big of a piece of the financial pie.
Eventually (when the grandfathering is done), that will be split up 34 ways. “If you are highly funded, you have more resources to spread out among players and you build your roster accordingly,” Northwestern State coach Chris Bertrand said. “If you have a smaller amount of resources, then your creativity in taking walk-ons becomes more critical.”
Which means that coaches may have to go about their recruiting process a little different in the future. “There’s no doubt that it’s going to affect the trajectory of what many people consider to be a walk-on or a preferred walk-on at the Division I level,” Bertrand said. “I don’t think it eliminates it, but I do think those numbers are going to shrink.”
But there are also other benefits to this in another level of college baseball. “Once all the DSA have cleared through in four years, junior colleges are going to get really good,” Burroughs said. “So that kid who is a walk-on (before) or a fringe scholarship player, he’s off to junior college.”
Does the new 34-man roster limit make things better or make things worse?
The answer is yes.
“The only thing constant about the rules is that they are going to be ever-changing,” Bertrand said. “You just have to embrace the constant change.”
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com
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