On Thursday, the SEC made a decision that will have a major impact on the rosters of college football’s top conference. According to Ross Dellinger at Yahoo Sports, the SEC has decided to maintain the existing 85-scholarship limit for the 2025 season. The settlement of the House vs NCAA case had athletic scholarship limits set to be eliminated for the next academic year and replaced with roster limits, with 105 set for football. Many have speculated what that would mean for existing walk-ons in college football, with programs then having to make decisions on how many of those 105 would be on scholarship.
“As football coaches recruit now to build rosters for the 2025 season, it was important to provide them with parameters to manage this interim period as we await a final ruling on the House settlement which would address how scholarships are managed going forward,” Dellinger’s release stated. “SEC schools will maintain an 85-scholarship limit for the 2025 season, the same as in past years, with an overall roster size to be established by the settlement if it is approved.”
No other conference has placed a limit on scholarships within the established roster limit. As it stands, the schools outside the SEC are allowed have up to 105 players on scholarship. Georgia head coach Kirby Smart has expressed his concern with the potential elimination of walk-ons.
“You don’t have to go to 105,” Smart said in August. “A lot of people may choose to. I don’t know that 105 scholarship players is the right way to go about it. Because you’ve got 105 NIL capabilities there. You’ve got more people that would be unhappy. You don’t have walk-ons when you do that.
“I don’t think it’s set in stone yet that everybody is going to rush off and go to 105. That’s a huge burden on the budget of the athletic department. And honestly there are a lot of kids here that do a great job for us as walk-ons and you would be dismissing them to say you’re going to go out and sign 20 more kids. We haven’t really gone down the path of the numbers yet.”
At the SEC spring meetings, Smart stressed the importance of walk-ons in the Georgia program.
“I don’t want to be remiss and be misquoted as, ‘Well, Kirby defends walk-ons.’ I don’t know anybody who wouldn’t defend walk-ons,” Smart said. “We’re talking about something that just makes sense. Now, when you implement that known fact into some form of settlement that I don’t completely understand, I don’t know where that factors in. OK? But when you look at Dabo Swinney’s career, Will Muschamp’s career, you look at Ladd McConkey. You look at guys that have come to schools and then gone on to be successful football players, successful football coaches, successful at everything they do, they overcame the ultimate odds. I don’t know anybody who would be against having those walkons. At what cost does that bring us? I think it hurts high school football and football as a whole when kids can’t even dream about ‘what I might be able to do if I can’t get an opportunity.’ I think that’s a challenge.”
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