What the New NCAA Recruiting Rule Means for Auburn
The NCAA recently announced that it has removed the 25-man limit on scholarships for football each year. Now, teams need only keep their rosters at 85 players or less to comply with NCAA scholarship restrictions. While this rule is likely needed due to the turmoil that the transfer portal and NIL have introduced to college football, this new rule may end up hurting Auburn in the long run.
On one hand, the Tigers may stand to gain from the introduction of this new rule. Like everything in college football nowadays, the transfer portal plays a large role. This new rule may cure some of Auburn’s transfer portal woes as a recruiting miss on a portal player may be amended by adding a high school player for whom there was previously not a spot. With Auburn not offering degrees that are compatible with many portal players’ studies, this new rule will allow Auburn to sign more high schoolers without the added hoops of getting transcripts approved by current Auburn professors.
This new rule will also give Auburn an advantage over teams such as Ole Miss who now lean more heavily on the portal than the high school ranks. Auburn will have the ability to make certain high school players feel like a priority as opposed to other coaches taking a plug-and-play approach with the portal.
Lastly, Auburn will be able to take more risks on offering players who might not have been offered with the 25-man limit. A player that comes to mind in this scenario is current NFL linebacker Zach Cunningham. At one point, Cunningham seemed to be an Auburn lean, but Auburn waited too long to offer because they were unsure how numbers on the linebacker board would shake out. With the introduction of this new rule, Auburn will be able to get in early with players who they may have taken a wait-and-see approach in the past.
On the other hand, Auburn’s biggest rivals will also be able to sign more players. Auburn has frequently made a living off of players who were shunned by Alabama and Georgia coaching staffs. Now, Auburn's biggest rivals will have no qualms with snatching up a developmental player that they might not have offered in the past. Players that used to sign with Auburn because Georgia and Alabama never called now will have a chance to sign with their top school. Furthermore, these players will not be deterred by being buried on the depth chart because they can now easily transfer wherever they wish if things don’t work out.
Low ranked developmental players and hidden gems will now have more scholarship opportunities at bigger and better schools without a 25 man scholarship limit. While this new rule especially hurts smaller schools, Auburn certainly will not benefit from its biggest rivals now having the ability to cast a wider recruiting net. The transfer portal will also hurt the Tigers in regards to this new rule. Auburn saw a plethora of players leave in the offseason and replaced them with only a few transfer additions of their own. How can a school like Auburn calculate how many players they can sign with the uncertainty surrounding who will enter the transfer portal? What happens when a high school player is offered and commits in anticipation of a player transferring elsewhere who later decides to withdraw from the portal? The questions are never-ending and lack of certainty has become commonplace in the modern landscape of college football.
On balance, this new rule will likely allow the rich to get richer. Big-name programs will have the chance to take risks on players that would typically sign elsewhere. Until the chaos of the transfer portal and NIL abates, teams like Auburn will not benefit from this new NCAA rule.
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