The NCAA plans to offer extra eligibility to spring athletes. How will that work?
TCU baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle said there’s been interest from all of his seniors in returning for the 2021 season with the NCAA planning to grant extra eligibility to spring sport athletes.
The one caveat, Schlossnagle said, for his players is “as long as it’s affordable.”
And that’s where the questions start with how the NCAA will implement an extra year of eligibility for spring athletes. (The NCAA has said any offer involving winter sport athletes remains under consideration.)
Baseball players, for instance, don’t receive full scholarships. The team is limited to 11.7 scholarships for 27 players. (The full roster can expand to 35 players.)
If a senior is getting a one-third scholarship this season, will that roll over to next season and not count against the 11.7 limit? Will roster sizes expand given the incoming class as well as possible returners?
All those questions have to be answered across all spring sports. Schlossnagle believes there will be a common sense approach to the layers of issues facing the NCAA and schools.
The NCAA is in the process of finalizing details for this proposal.
“I do think common sense will prevail,” Schlossnagle said. “I don’t know what form that will take. We’ll just see what they do.”
Here are the three main questions going forward and possible answers to them:
1. Scholarship limits. The NCAA should make a baseline rule that seniors returning will have the same scholarship in 2020-21 as in previous years without counting against the sport’s limit. So if a baseball team returns three players each with one-third scholarships, then that school’s scholarship limit next season is 12.7 instead of 11.7.
Power Five schools such as TCU likely can honor additional scholarships for seniors who opt to return. The problem lies with smaller schools who may not have the necessary budget to honor such scholarships across the board.
But the NCAA can work with smaller schools on solutions that make sense for all involved.
2. Roster limits. Much like the scholarships, the NCAA should have an exception where returning seniors do not count against the roster limit. If five seniors return on a baseball team, then that roster can grow up to 40.
As Schlossnagle said, “Nobody is better at roster management than college baseball coaches. We’ll work our way through it.”
3. Transfer rules. This won’t be popular but it’s the most practical. The NCAA should not allow returning seniors the option to transfer. If they want to play another season, it has to be at their current school.
That might mean limited playing time at certain positions if there is a highly-touted freshman coming in, but it’s the fairest way.
If the NCAA does something similar as the scholarship and roster proposals, it’d be understandable to prohibit seniors (who should be out of eligibility) from transferring from their current schools.
This story was originally published March 17, 2020 at 3:07 PM.
