Spring Sports - NCAA

[bonawolf02]

Last night, the NCAA approved senior student-athletes of spring sports an additional year of eligibility. Teams are allowed to expand rosters, etc. in order to allocate appropriate roster sports.

www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/division-i-council-extends-eligibility-student-athletes-impacted-covid-19

Although the NCAA approved it, it will be up to the institutions whether or not to offer it to student-athletes. It's been said the move would add an additional $400K +/- to the annual budget for non-P5 schools. Will be interesting to see how Bonas reacts and how they proceed with action.

The opportunity would be provide to all 2020 seniors ONLY - no underclassman. 

[Pinnum]

Mar 31, 2020 14:36:23 GMT -5 bonawolf02 said:

The opportunity would be provide to all 2020 seniors ONLY - no underclassman. 

That's not correct. Everyone gets the year back. No spring athlete will be charged a year of eligibility for this season.

The senior stipulation is that a school does not have to count the scholarship for a senior, if they come back next season, against their scholarship limits. Schools are permitted to reduce (all the way to zero) the scholarships for returning seniors if they wish. This means that a school can allow seniors to return without increasing their scholarship budget so that it won't cost the school more money.

The whole reason that seniors are the only ones to be permitted to go over the scholarship limit is because schools have already signed incoming athlete to scholarship offers. The seniors coming back was not expected and the money in the scholarship budget was not there.

This is a one time budget expansion exemption because the scholarships for incoming recruits have been signed. Next year programs will know how many players are returning and will be back to the normal roster and scholarship limits.



Example: Baseball is permitted to have 35 athletes on their roster (no more than that) and can offer 11.7 scholarships (can be divided into partial scholarships).

Let's say a team had six seniors and those seniors shared 3 scholarships between them all with half scholarships. If a full scholarship is $60,000. Then this means that the school is permitted to increase their scholarship budget by $180,000 if all six of those seniors return next year. They are also permitted to have 41 players on the roster as returning seniors are exempt from the roster limit.

If only four of those athletes return, the school is only permitted to increase their roster by the four seniors returning and only can offer $120,000 more in scholarships.

However, if the school decides that they can't afford to raise the scholarship budget. The school can reduce those seniors scholarships to any amount--even zero--and tell them they can return to the program but won't be offered a scholarship. (NCAA rules don't permit reducing a scholarship under normal circumstances.) They can't give the seniors more scholarship than they had this year. They can only maintain their scholarship. A school could also not raise their scholarship budget and give the seniors scholarships, as long as it was room in the budget from athletes not returning or scholarships that were being held out for athletes who haven't signed yet.