Rooney: New scholarship/roster limits coming for CU Buffs
Getting accustomed to the first year in the old conference will involve more than just getting used to being league rivals with schools like West Virginia, Central Florida and Houston.
Another wave of change is coming to NCAA athletics that will change the way Colorado fans watch the Buffaloes.
This past summer, as part of the yet-to-be-finalized House settlement regarding revenue sharing in college sports, it was revealed that roster limits, instead of scholarship limits, will be in play beginning with the 2025-26 athletics calendar.
The walk-on athlete might not go extinct. But it could join the endangered species list.
Schools want to get out front in terms of which athletes, and how many, can earn pieces of the pie when NIL eventually evolves into a more pro-like pay-for-play model (The NCAA won't call it that, but that's what it is). The NCAA will say the new roster limits will increase opportunities for young athletes, and in one sense that's true. Roster limits and the correlative scholarship limits will be increased across the board, adding more than 750 scholarships to the equation in 2025-26.
That's across all sports. At CU, which sponsors a combined 15 men's and women's programs, the Buffs will be adding 181.6 scholarships — 98 for women and 83.6 for men.
Beyond the raw numbers, though, the alleged increase in opportunities might depend on one's point of view. Coaches won't necessarily be obligated to use every scholarship. Track, for instance, will have what seems like unwieldy roster increases from 12.6 scholarships to 45 for men and 18 to 45 for women. In men's basketball, which will go from 13 scholarships to 15, head coach Tad Boyle has never played 13 players in a regular rotation. He won't play 15, either. Yet if all those spots are filled, that's additional scholarship athletes who will expect pieces of the NIL pie. Football will go from 85 scholarships to a 105-player limit.
While coach Danny Sanchez's soccer program is an example of one CU team that typically carries a smaller-than-average roster (No. 14 CU soccer took a 24-player roster into Saturday's battle against No. 23 TCU; The Horned Frogs have 31 players on the roster), Boyle has been a proponent of having four to five walk-ons, most notably for practice depth.
Walk-ons aren't being litigated out of the equation but, as an example, if Boyle uses only 13 scholarships, good luck telling a young player essentially, "We have scholarships, we're just not giving you one." Especially with more scholarships available elsewhere.
"At the University of Colorado, the way I look at it, it's going to negate three young men from having a great experience that in the past they've been able to have, and in the future they won't be able to have," Boyle said. "So you have three kids who won't be walk-ons here that could have been and would have been. And that's unfortunate. That's the downside to it. That's the collateral damage of what we're dealing with. It's disappointing.
"When it goes to 15, how are we going to divide that up? How are we going to look at that? Yet to be determined. I've certainly thought about it. If the pay-for-play model goes in-house, we've got to look at how we're going to divide those 15 scholarships and how we're going to use them. We haven't answered that yet. I think the answer to that question is TBD."
Boyle, like all his coaching brethren, is waiting to see how folks not at all involved with the coaching profession hash out what the future of NCAA rosters looks like. Dealing with the inevitable change already has been a topic of conversation in the basketball offices.
"If pay for play goes in-house, I'll be given a budget," Boyle said. "That's the way I think things will happen. I don't know if that's true or not, but as I prepare for this, if pay for play goes in house, I'll have a budget to work with. If pay for play does not go in-house and stays with the collectives, then I'm still going to have a budget and I'm going to have to navigate that with 15 roster guys. We don't know what that's going to look like yet. You can go to 11 scholarships and four walk-ons. You can divide the scholarships up. We don't know what that's going to look like yet. There's ideas. There's thoughts. But nobody knows. So there's so many more questions than there are answers. We're preparing for (a 15 roster limit). But we don't know what the nuances of that are going to look like."
