College Baseball’s Golden Age receives jolt with more scholarships on the way
D1 Baseball by Kendall Rogers
July 18, 2024
The days of college baseball programs being relegated to 11.7 scholarships are about to become a distant memory.
The winds of change are constant around college athletics now. Still, one thing we know for sure is that with the NCAA’s landmark House case settlement, the landscape of athletics in general, and specifically baseball, is about to change.
When the NCAA created the Transformation Committee three years ago, several high-level leaders, including Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey, mentioned increasing college baseball scholarships. At the time, the feeling was that baseball could eventually increase scholarships to a more palatable number, potentially 17-18. It was an idea that honestly seemed like a pipe dream at the time.
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 of 34 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 34 players, all 34 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. For teams that can’t get to the 34 full-scholarship threshold, you could theoretically spread 18 scholarships over 34 players. One mid-major coach told D1Baseball this week that it would make the situation ‘doable’ for them and others in the same boat. Another mid-major coach, Austin Peay’s Roland Fanning, echoed those sentiments to D1Baseball.
“I think it’s honestly really good for mid-major baseball. There are going to be more players who can’t be on a Power Four baseball roster because of the roster decrease, and that means they’re going to have to find another avenue in which to play college baseball,” Fanning said. “That’s a win for guys like us, that’s a win for DII, NAIA and especially junior college baseball. By doing this, you’re really going to force the bigger conferences to really evaluate those slots. This will be benefit the player, and the mid-majors.”
College athletics power brokers still need to ‘officially’ decide on the actual roster size. That is still to be determined, though Sankey told Dellenger he expects the number to fall in the ‘mid-30s’. Sources believe the number will sit at 34, while Craig Keilitz, the executive director of the American Baseball Coaches Association, said his organization believes a 35-man roster is the sweet spot.
The changes are expected to go into effect in Fall 2025.
“Usually in a situation in college baseball where there’s uncertainty, there’s bad news ahead, but that is simply not the case here,” Keilitz said. “We are in favor of a 35-man roster, for no other reason than that is the number that it takes to put together a baseball team with safety in mind for the student-athletes.
“I’ve heard behind the scenes about athletic directors who want less than 35 players on the roster, and I’d say this – I think they owe it to their coaches, league, and us to let us know why they think that way. If you’re going to say you want fewer than 35 players on the roster, give us compelling reasons to consider that. That’s all I ask for.”
Division I Baseball is already in a golden age. It’s about to receive another jolt.
“College baseball has historically been synonymous with student loan debt. Any increase in scholarships is a huge win for the sport,” Clemson head coach Erik Bakich said. “I’m over the moon about this news, and I’m ecstatic to hear there’s going to be more scholarship availability for baseball players. We have a long history of taking out sizable loans to cover the costs of college.
“On the flip side, there has always been a disparity between who even fully funds the 11.7 to facilities, to financial aid and now to NIL,” Bakich added. “That’s just part of college baseball, so it’s only natural that there continues to be that gap in who can fund what.
“Being at one of the schools that is going to fully fund everything, it’s an exciting day. There are always going to be schools that have disadvantages no matter what — whether it’s weather, funding, etc. … I’ve been there. I think you must focus on your strengths as a program and go from there. That’s just part of competitive college athletics and sports in general. Never is anything going to be the same for everyone.”
The ability to offer more than 30 full scholarships to a college baseball team is a big win for the student-athletes. That much is certain. The other big winners with this news are the programs and conferences willing to provide the money to fund more or a roster full of scholarships.
Sources believe that almost all of the SEC, ACC, and Big 12 institutions will fund the full number of scholarships in baseball. There’s more uncertainty on where the majority of the Big Ten stands on this issue, while the Sun Belt, one of the rising power conferences in college baseball, is a league that is expected to do all it can to offer the amount needed to compete against the SEC and ACC.
“If it lands in the mid-30s, it’ll be tough for us to offer full scholarships to the entire roster — I think it’ll even be tough for some of the Power Four teams to do it,” a prominent Group of Five athletic director told D1Baseball. “But I’ll say this – you’ve seen a concerted effort from the Group of Five schools over the last 5-10 years to really invest in baseball and softball. We view the diamond sports as our best chance to compete and defeat the power schools. We will ensure we invest at a level allowing us to continue doing those two things.”
How some of the mid-major and minor conferences will react to this news is also noteworthy. There are many programs in this threshold that struggle to even meet the maximum 11.7 scholarships currently allowed in Division I Baseball. Conventional wisdom suggests these programs will follow the same pathway they’re already on in our sport – make ends meet where they can despite the disadvantages. Others wonder if some of these schools will decide to punt baseball programs altogether.
Keilitz doesn’t view the latter to be of grave concern just yet.
“There has been no word and no movement at the mid-major level to break off into another division or anything like that – it’s something they’d have to do on their own, and I’m not sure there’s an appetite for that,” Keilitz said. “The schools will do the best with what they have — they’re already doing that. That is what gets lost here.
“If you look across the country right now, not all schools have baseball to purely just win national championships. That’s a great goal to have – don’t get me wrong – but that’s not the goal of some schools,” he added. “Some schools use athletics and baseball at the high level to win national titles; others use it just to have athletics on campus and to create academic opportunities. There are many variables on why a school has a baseball program. There will continue to be a push for schools to have baseball so that they can brings kids to campus that otherwise would never be there from a revenue generation standpoint.
“In many ways, from a mid-major standpoint, this won’t be much different than the current situation. When you consider the rosters, the 11.7, need-based aid, academic aid, and NIL money on top of that, many mid-majors are already living through this environment of disparity. That’s just the new reality — there is no equity anymore. That has been gone for quite some time. It’s far gone at this point.
“We are in a position in college athletics to do whatever doesn’t equal a potential lawsuit.”
There will be other aspects of this decision to consider. Increasing baseball’s permissible full scholarships to 34 players has Title IX implications. If baseball finalizes that structure, softball will also be part of that process. Increasing full scholarships to 34 players will also affect every level of baseball, including the professional ranks.
With this setup, the trend of more high-level prospects out of the high school ranks going to college will only increase at a rate that benefits the college game even more. The roster size is something else to consider. If you have a 40-man roster and it is now a 34-man roster, that means that in a league like the SEC with 16 teams, 96 players will need to find new homes. In leagues such as the ACC and Big 12 with 14 teams, that number would be 84 players in each league needing to find a new home.
In other words, a legitimate trickle-down effect to the mid-major ranks would begin late next summer. That occurrence could also boost other levels of NCAA Baseball and the junior college ranks. Administrators and coaches expect the transfer portal to be more active than ever next summer.
Overall, plenty of details remain to work out about this landmark news. First, what will the roster limit be in our sport? That decision is coming soon. Second, what will teams not in the SEC, ACC, Sun Belt and Big 12 do moving forward?
It’s both an anxious and exciting time in college baseball.
We do know this, though:
More scholarships are finally coming.
There go the excuses for USC mediocrity Let's see how they manage to screw this up