Recent changes in athletic scholarships NCAA sport in response to NIL (Name, Image Likeness) have leveled the field of opportunities for many athletes and Non-Power Five schools.
This past summer NCAA increased the roster sizes and available athletic scholarship limits targeting Division 1 schools for all sports. Though not all schools have to fulfill these limits, they will not be able to exceed them even including walk-ons and non-scholarship players.
For example, Women's Division 1 volleyball rosters were limited to 12 players, and included in those players also 12 available scholarships. For the new 2025-2026 academic year, this limit will be raised to 18 players, including 18 available scholarships. Women’s Beach Volleyball roster limit used to be 6 athletes, but has now been raised to 19. As for Men’s Volleyball, the previous roster and scholarship limit was 4.5, but will be increased to 18 athletes for the next academic year. Despite these raised limits schools do not have to offer the full scholarship allocation, but they may not exceed roster sizes. Therefore, opportunities for walk-ons and non-scholarship recruited athletes are fewer.
“It was interesting how it all went down because it went from zero to a hundred overnight,” Newtown High School Athletic Director Matt Memoli said. “There was no gradual change. I [also] feel like it gives more opportunity for our student athletes.”
These changes were in response to cases like Carter v. NCAA (carries the same argument as Alston v. NCAA in 2021) in 2023, where football player Dwane Carter (Duke), soccer player Nya Harrison (Stanford), and basketball player Sedona Prince (Oregon, transferred to TCU), sued NCAA for denying student-athletes compensation in addition to their grant-in-aid.
This case stated that instead of colleges paying their recruits in scholarship money, they spend that same money on building state-of-the-art facilities and well-known coaches to draw athletes their way. Lawyers claim that colleges are able to do this because of amateurism laws within the NCSA and NCAA.
Despite the positives of this situation, the lack of control over current NIL rights, which allow athletes to get anything from $10 to one million dollars and more (in addition to their scholarships) is not good for athletics in that it presents an uneven playing field
A similar case was filed in 2023 with Oklahoma State University football player Chuba Hubbard and Track & Field athlete Keira McCarrel from Auburn University. Hubbard hired a specialist, who calculated his plaintiff to result in a $313 million dollar fine that would be distributed among college athletes over a 3 (academic) year period.
Hubbard’s class-action lawsuit declares that The NCAA has broken the Antitrust Laws. And if The NCAA is found violating these rights, fines will be tripled.
Another case started in 2020, House v. NCAA, was brought to the stand by swimmer Grant House (Arizona State) and Sedona Prince (Oregon/TCU). House and Prince had sued NCAA for “barring name, image, and likeness (NIL) payments prior to 2021,” The Daily Mississippian quotes Keith Carter, Ole Miss athletic director, stating that, “The NCAA will pay (the $2.78 billion in back-pay to former college athletes). They will pay it out over a 10-year period,” to The Daily Mississippian.
As a result of this, construction and renovation on the Ole Miss baseball and Vaught-Hemingway stadiums, the Ole Miss Golf Complex, and the Ole Miss Soccer Stadium have all been paused until this 10-year payment has been fulfilled. As for the back pay in this situation, the process of dividing it among athletes is yet to be decided.
“College sports will be turning into more of a business than ever before,” states the NHS girls volleyball coach Tom Czaplinski. “Athletes will now be able to get paid while also getting education.”
Czaplinski, Sacred Heart volleyball alumni, states that the future of college athletics “will be changing more frequently, always trying to get a better deal.”
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