1. 

   Tre
   June 7th, 2010 - 19:39

   makes sense. The top schools are still the ones up top. Might as well do away with the limit. Players will still go to other schools for playing time, etc.

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2. 

   Lee Roi Jordan
   June 7th, 2010 - 21:52

   Interesting, but I think the 85 man roster limit is probably more important than the 25 man annual limit. I was not present at the negotiating table when these limits were instituted, but my guess is that some combination of economics and logistics led to the 85 man roster cap. This is essentially a salary cap for college football teams so the rich schools do not have as great an advantage. My further guess is that you are correct that the larger annual limit does allow for some natural attrition. The factor you did not consider is the difference between average attrition and periodic extraordinary attrition. A school that consistently signd 25 kids and experienced losses of four or five athletes per year would easily stay right around the 85 limit with a few redshirts using five years. This team might not even need to sign 25 each year. Another school may not be as fortunate as the first school and may experience a year or two of extraordinary attrition. Maybe a coaching change or maybe scholarship reductions, but this second school could see a year in which they lose ten to fifteen athletes. This extraordinary case (which is actually not all that uncommon) is the reason that schools have the flexibility to sign as many as 25 in a year to get back to par. The 25/85 standard is not that far out of whack when you consider that several schools each year experience extraordinary attrition and need to reload. It is not perfect, but has been proven to be workable.

   It is interesting that your proposal to do away with the total roster limit and rely solely on the annual limits would create the opposite effect of the current oversigning problem. In the current system, aggressive schools sign as many kids as possible and then allow (or force depending on your point of view) attrition to take the roster down to 85. The goal is to ensure that a team plays the season with as close to 85 as possible and further to go through spring practice with even more than 85 to ensure the best roster possible. Under your scenario, the aggressive schools would go to extremes not to encourage but instead to limit attrition. A school that signed 25 each year, redshirted all 25 and suffered no attrition could play with as many as 125 on its roster, a significant advantage. It would be extremely difficult to eliminate all attrition, but I’m sure that many of the same schools that currently bend the rules to benefit from attrition would find ways to slow the losses to a trickle.

   The benefit of this is that more kids may get scholarships, but the salary cap feature of the 85 man roster limit would be minimized. The new quest for the maximum roster would likely make coaches even more reticent to offerrisky athletes and thus the additional scholarships may not benefit the disadvantaged athletes as much as the current system. I personnally do not care what the roster limit is set at, but I imagine the weaker schools negotiated 85 for a reason.

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   • 

     tre
     June 13th, 2010 - 17:47

     “The benefit of this is that more kids may get scholarships, but the salary cap feature of the 85 man roster limit would be minimized”

     I am surprised someone doesnt sue the NCAA for limiting education. It is the NCAA that is capping the number of scholarships that can be given out. They would have a hard time defending their position and limiting the education of student athletes.

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3. 

   Dan
   June 8th, 2010 - 12:34

   How much of an impact does the 85 scholarship limit really have in parity among CFB teams? Was parity really caused by the scholarship limit or did it have more to do with increased media coverage of the mid-major teams?

   Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Did scholarship limits bring parity which then brought increased media coverage or did increased media coverage bring parity? Certainly the limits have helped to create parity but to what degree? Does that degree of help remain constant or is it increase/decreasing as time goes by? It would seem to me that as media coverage for all schools grows, the benifit of being on a bigger school is reduced by some amount.

   What did more for parity, the scholarship limit or the ability for players like Randy Moss to play for teams like Marshall and still move on to an NFL career?

   As much as high school football stars want to play for Favorite Big Name School, they also want to play enough on Saturday to have a chance to play on Sunday. More and more, the smaller named schools are showing that they can provide enough media coverage to get recognized with an easier path onto the playing surface.

   Increasing the scholarship limit would certainly lead to bigger schools swelling their rosters with talented players. However, today’s landscape is not the same as it was in the 60s and 70s where to get to the NFL, most players had to prove they could first see playing time on the bloated rosters of a handful of schools. Today, high school players have more options available. There are more camaras focused on more fields. Why compete with a returning starter and a handful of other 5 star recruits when you can step onto another field with a coach who wants to make YOU the star of the team? Which path is more likely to lead to success and the NFL? If you’re good enough, it doesn’t matter which team you’re on but even still, which team is less risky to join?

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