Can anyone clarify how the "free year" affects the scholarship limit. If a senior decides to stay does that count against the scholarship limit. How would a team with 13 scholarships deal with the situation of signed recruits pushing the scholarship limit over 13 if seniors decide to stay. Do you have to turn down senior or will NCAA allow limit to be exceeded ?
Free Year v Scholarship Limit
- Thread starter docrugby1
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I was wondering about this too. In theory, NU could have no scholarships available for the 2022 class, if Gaines wanted to be a redshirt senior in his sixth year at NU. And Nance/Kopp/Greer wanted to be fifth-year seniors (and Ryan Young a fifth-year redshirt junior).
You’re assuming staff would want Gaines back for 5/6 years; same for a 5th year of Greer/Young. They might prefer incoming frosh for those spots.
If I understand correctly teams are allowed to go over the hard cap to bring in as many kids as they had space for coming into the 2020-2021 season, provided they have the $$$ in the budget. But they have to be back to 13 after 2021-2022.
So a team with 13 scholarship players this year, including 2 seniors, can bring in 2 recruits. They will be allowed to have 15 scholarship players next year. Then the two seniors need to move on by the end of next season or they count against the cap. (And if one of them got injured and took a medical redshirt, the school would need to make space by cutting someone/encouraging an athlete to move on, or encouraging the medical redshirt player to walk-on, or the guy will have to transfer elsewhere to play his last year).
Where this gets interesting for NU is if Gaines, Kopp and Nance all decide to take advantage of the rule and stay for an extra year. At that point, the ‘Cats will 13 players on the roster with no one leaving in 2021-2022. So we would have zero scholarships to give for next year’s recruiting cycle. Which is to say, if we hypothetically crushed the B1G this year, we would not be able to immediately benefit on the recruiting trail. That said, I’d assume that if we had a team that played that great, we would all be okay with keeping the roster intact.
So a team with 13 scholarship players this year, including 2 seniors, can bring in 2 recruits. They will be allowed to have 15 scholarship players next year. Then the two seniors need to move on by the end of next season or they count against the cap. (And if one of them got injured and took a medical redshirt, the school would need to make space by cutting someone/encouraging an athlete to move on, or encouraging the medical redshirt player to walk-on, or the guy will have to transfer elsewhere to play his last year).
Where this gets interesting for NU is if Gaines, Kopp and Nance all decide to take advantage of the rule and stay for an extra year. At that point, the ‘Cats will 13 players on the roster with no one leaving in 2021-2022. So we would have zero scholarships to give for next year’s recruiting cycle. Which is to say, if we hypothetically crushed the B1G this year, we would not be able to immediately benefit on the recruiting trail. That said, I’d assume that if we had a team that played that great, we would all be okay with keeping the roster intact.
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Of course. We’ve been over this with Gaines as it pertains to a spot for PBJ.
I’m just throwing out some hypotheticals and wondering how many offers CCC and staff will put out in 2022. Looks like only a handful so far.
I’m still of the belief that the extra year of eligibility being offered for 2020 would allow Gaines to return for an additional year as a non-counter; which would allow us to offer PBJ a scholarship. I don’t think we’re over recruiting as Gaines is a senior who can graduate after the season.
To do that NU would effectively be saying to the NCAA “we weren’t going to ask Athlete X back to our program, so we’re gonna give his scholarship to someone else. But since you’re also giving out free years of eligibility, we’d like to request that Athlete X, whose scholarship we just rescinded/didn’t extend to make room for someone else, remain in our program as a scholarship athlete.” That’s some Hollywood accounting. But it’s 2020, so I’ll never say never.
If this year (2020-21) does not count towards eligibility due to COVID-19 and teams would be able to be over the limit in 2021-22 to account for returnees, wouldn't Anthony Gaines be able to come back while NU would simultaneously be able to add PBJ as a new recruit for 2021-22?
1) as I mentioned, my understanding is that you can only go over the limit by awarding scholarships that would have been vacated by departing athletes who are now staying another year. This way you somewhat reduce the harm to this year’s HS class. (Many smaller programs might not be able to afford to roster so many players so some HS kids will still likely get screwed and fail to land a scholarship they wouldn’t have had without covid.)
2) Again, it’s my understanding the rule is to accommodate players who would have exhausted their eligibility, not people a program wouldn’t have asked to return. If Athlete X isn’t a senior and isn’t in your program’s plans and you want to boot them to free up a scholarship, COVID doesn’t impact that. Go ahead and push them out and recruit another kid. But you can’t say “well we were gonna show athlete X the door, but now we want to keep him AND free up that scholarship, so let us have both.” Could be wrong but that’s not what the rule is for. (And really, how do you prove to the NCAA that you weren’t gonna offer a 5th year to a productive player?) IMO it’s a pipe dream. But I’d be happy to be wrong.
It’s actually simpler than this. At least for fall sports, the NCAA acknowledged that this season would be weird and that athletes would get short-changed on the full season. So they basically said that in terms of eligibility the 2020 season is a free pass. It doesn’t count against the “Play 4 seasons in 5 years” counter.
For fall sports, they bumped the scholarship limit up for 2021 to accommodate the engorged rosters that will result from a bunch of fifth (or sixth!) year seniors.
That’s my understanding. We can now offer Gaines an additional year of eligibility (doesn’t count due to 2020 rule) and also have ability to offer PBJ a scholarship. Who’s to say we were or weren’t going to offer Gaines a 5th year? It doesn’t matter now due to the new rule.
Trust me, I hope you’re right. But I do think it’s odd that the NCAA would believe we were gonna cut a junior (thanks to the free year) who we helped petition for a medical redshirt. Then whole thing seems against the spirit of the rule.
I think you’re over thinking it. The NCAA doesn’t care. They just want the # of total scholarship players in each season to be below the allowed limit. They leave it to schools to figure out how they get to that number each year.
He’s not a junior...he’s a redshirt Junior that’s been in the program for four years. He qualifies for another year of eligibility due to last season’s injury. There is no obligation for him to return however. NU has the option to offer him a 5th year if they so desire. Or they can use the scholarship for an incoming freshman and wish AG the best of luck if they so desire. Due to the 2020 Covid rules Gaines gets a free year to return which will allow our scholarship count to be at 14 thus creating an extra spot for PBJ. That’s my interpretation of the rule.
This free year could work out much to our benefit as it would give Beran and Nance an extra year to develop their bodies and their games if they chose to stay for the max. Imagine what they could be like with an extra year in the program. They are very good now but they would be truly formidable by then.
I don’t think the free year applies to them. Only players in their fourth or fifth years. At least that’s my understanding. Maybe Lou can check with the NU compliance office for some clarification.
It applies to everyone. The NCAA’s example on their website pertains to a “D1 freshman athlete.”
NCAA Eligibility Requirements for Student-Athletes
The NCAA determines a student-athlete’s eligibility based on their academic preparedness and amateurism status. Learn more about NCAA eligibility.
www.ncsasports.org
It applies to everyone. The NCAA’s example on their website pertains to a “D1 freshman athlete.”
NCAA Eligibility Requirements for Student-Athletes
The NCAA determines a student-athlete’s eligibility based on their academic preparedness and amateurism status. Learn more about NCAA eligibility.
Yes, but wasn’t there talk of schools have to be back down to the scholarship limit in two years effectively eliminating an entire recruiting class? There’s too much here to speculate upon, at the end of the day, my sense is that NU will have room for both Gaines and PBJ if the latter wants to be at NU.
Respectfully, there’s not as much speculation as you seem to think.
- Everyone gets a free year, across the board. Doesn’t matter if you’re a senior or a freshman. Doesn’t matter if you play or not. This year does not count against your eligibility. That is the rule that has already been passed for fall, winter and spring sports.
- In order to not screw over the 2020 HS class, the NCAA has publicly stated that seniors — and so far, *only* seniors (people who would have otherwise *exhausted eligibility*) — can come back without counting against the cap. Teams then need to be back down to 85/13/whatever by the following season. (For whatever reason, you seem to think this applies to guys who wouldn’t have been asked back. I haven’t seen any articles or rulings that corroborate what you’re saying. But hopefully you’re right, as adding yet another player would be awesome.)
- However, an unintended effect of this is that there is going to be a scholarship crunch in 2022 recruiting, since *as yet* there isn’t a work around for the reduced number of “true” seniors across the country. If anything, teams are shrinking their recruiting classes this year to have more scholarships to give next year because juniors will still be juniors. Here’s an article about how Washington State is handling it.
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