This article kind of singles out the Huskers but I doubt they are the only program that will experience big time change. If I read the rules correctly it states that following the conference championship games a twenty day window will be open for players to enter the portal and then in April another window will open. Does that mean because of that coaches won’t know who they will have for a bowl game and who they won’t?
At any rate college sports are really a mess. I don’t know but I think the days of college sports that we loved are and will continue to be a thing of the past.
As the article points out, the main reason for the exodus is that Nebraska has one of the largest rosters due to their long-standing walkon program, which the NCAA has effectively killed, something the Big Twelve and Big Ten couldn’t find a way to do.
More than one school has said that spring games will be severely impacted by roster limits. Might see shorter games or more limits on contact and more switching between A and B teams. Northwestern hasn’t held a real spring game in years, they sometimes do point-based offense/defense drills or just a visitor-open practice.
I will be watching closely to see if the SEC tries to find a new way around the roster limit rules when they come out, grey-shirting is also outlawed, as I understand it.
I think there will be a lot of players left standing when the music stops playing, because many schools have more than 105 players on their current rosters. One of the lesser publicized aspects of the transfer roster is that a third or so of the players who enter it don’t find a new scholarship and wind up moving down a division or two. That’ll get worse if they can’t walk on anywhere.
The recent suit by a player to get JC playing time exempted from the 4/5 year limit may have an impact, too.
I thought I had read that the NCAA was trying to get rid of the spring transfer window, but maybe that doesn’t happen until 2026 or it didn’t pass?
Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz talked about the 105 player roster limit in his weekly press conference, Iowa has about 125 players on the roster now, so they’ve got some serious cutting to do to make the 105 limit, as will quite a few teams. He says that’s on next week’s agenda, right now they’ve got a game to prep for. He also noted that at this point the schools still have nothing in writing that details how the 105 player limit will work.
Kirk talked about how the coaches were hoping they’d settle on a 120 player roster size, or at least ladder down to 105 over multiple seasons, but obviously the higher-ups didn’t want to go that way.
In these days where so many things wind up in the courts, I wonder what would happen if a group of HS players who aren’t able to find a place to play in 2025 (and there will probably be lots of them) were to sue the NCAA over the roster limits?