The NCAA’s Division I Council voted Wednesday to eliminate the annual limits on initial counters, the number of new scholarship players a program can add each offseason. The move allows FBS and FCS football programs to replace as many scholarships as they lose up to their overall roster limits (85 for FBS schools, 63 for FCS schools).
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Here’s what you need to know:
- Initial counter limits have been suspended since 2021, after COVID-19 eligibility complications and the one-time transfer exception fostered a dramatic increase in player movement and programs struggled to find enough roster spots to accommodate those newcomers under the old rules.
- The previous FBS limit on initial counters was 25 per year; in the FCS, the limit was 30 per year.
- The move was in conjuncture with the Council’s vote to shorten transfer windows from a total of 60 days to 45 days for all sports.
Why is this limit being removed?
The simplest explanation is that the toothpaste can’t go back into the tube. The initial counter limits were waived for 2022-23 and ’23-24 as a response to increasing attrition rates due to the popularity of the transfer portal as well as the extra year of eligibility for 2020. It was the right call at the time, giving coaches more freedom to replace what they lost and maintain an 85-man scholarship roster. It’s not good for anyone when programs don’t have 85 players because they ran out of scholarships to add more, but it was the portal that made leaders start to take that issue seriously.
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Now there’s simply no clean way to go back to 25-man signing limits. The result of this change was predictable: Coaches can once again oversign with their recruiting and portal classes and run off their underperforming players to get back to 85. Colorado’s Deion Sanders wouldn’t have been able to bring in 68 new scholarship players for Year 1 if those signing limits were in place. Increased freedom in roster management has been essential for new coaching staffs and rebuilding programs. Once that limit was waived, it was obvious there would be no easy way to go back to the old way of doing things. — Max Olson, senior college football writer
(Photo: Logan Riely / Getty Images)
