NCAA Grants Additional Eligibility For All Spring Athletes

All spring athletes were granted an additional season of eligibility, but it remains a complicated situation.

The NCAA took dramatic steps today in reaction to the lost spring seasons due to the COVID-19 fears.

During a March 30 meeting the Division I Council voted to provide an additional season of eligibility for every student-athlete that played in a spring sport.

"Members also adjusted financial aid rules to allow teams to carry more members on scholarship to account for incoming recruits and student-athletes who had been in their last year of eligibility who decide to stay. In a nod to the financial uncertainty faced by higher education, the Council vote also provided schools with the flexibility to give students the opportunity to return for 2020-21 without requiring that athletics aid be provided at the same level awarded for 2019-20. This flexibility applies only to student-athletes who would have exhausted eligibility in 2019-20.”

Read the full report HERE.

In order to accommodate how this impacts scholarship numbers, the committee loosened roster restrictions in 2020-21. Per Kendall Rogers at D1Baseball.com, seniors who return next year will not count towards the roster limit. For example, baseball has a roster cap of 35 players, so it can have 35 non-returning seniors on the roster.

While this was the right decision, passing this does not mean schools snap their fingers and bring everyone back. There is a financial cost to this, and schools that go over their scholarship limi will also have additional costs. With the NCAA’s recent announcement that it was cutting disbursements to schools by 62.5% from this past year, schools are already suffering financially, especially programs that aren’t among the Power 5 programs, which benefit from football revenue.

What this means is programs will need to make tough decisions from a budget standpoint. The fact is some programs might not be able to afford to bring back all of the seniors that want to return and the newcomers to the program.

Part of the decision was to allow schools to match or provide less scholarship money to any returning senior. If I’m reading the rule correctly, that means the school could offer a senior a spot on the roster, but reduce the money it is providing towards their scholarship. The reality is the vast majority of sports, especially spring sports, don’t offer full scholarships to everyone on their roster. Many will divvy up the money total financial allotment provided by their institution.

Many schools are likely to be in a situation where the expanded rosters benefit them on the field, but they cannot afford to meet the same financial commitment to each returner and each newcomer.