The impact of pending NCAA roster limitations are beginning to be felt in a big way. In the leadup to Wednesday’s national signing day, there was a slew of athletes being told that the promised spots on teams were no longer available.
The best analogy for what swimming is experiencing right now is college baseball. In baseball, athletes are commonly drafted out of high school amid a massive draft that runs 20 standard rounds plus a further five special rounds.
Unlike some sports, athletes can wait to see where they are drafted (and in fact don’t even need to declare for the draft if they’re from the U.S. or Canada) before deciding whether to jump straight to the minor leagues or to attend college.
This leaves a lot more uncertainty for coaches about who is actually going to show up on signing day and who will not.
Hard roster caps are exacerbating this problem in baseball, where the average roster size in the 2023-2024 season is 41.9 and where the hard cap will became 34 under the new arrangement.
Incidentally, baseball coaches are lamenting the new roster limits creating strain on their practice schedules. They say the new caps don’t leave teams with enough pitchers to run full practices, fearing it could lead to increased injuries.
While most athletics departments have given their swim coaches soft caps for the purposes of Title IX balancing, there is no more flexibility. These hard caps, and the possibility of decommits, will likely lead to either 1) over-offering, or 2) more cuts of existing swimmers when a potential freshman has more upside.
But more broadly, what we’re seeing is coaches who recruited their classes of 2025 when thinking they were limited by their internal soft caps, when in reality they’re being limited by the new proposed hard caps, which for swimming in the major conferences are likely to land at 30 women and 22-24 men per team. The men’s number, specifically, seems to fluctuate by the day, but most coaches’ most recent information has it in that range.
One SEC program reportedly pulled offers from five women last week – the gender with higher roster limits. Some of those swimmers have already recommitted elsewhere.
The emotional fallout of this is going to be significant. While many coaches from next-tier programs have been anxiously waiting to take advantage of these opportunities to improve their programs. Athletes who have told their friends, family, and the whole of the swimming community that they are going to swim at a big name-brand program X will now have to tell those same people that they are no longer going there. The lists we report of commitments to each program at the end of recruiting articles are now almost assuredly out-of-date.
But college athletics are now indisputably a business with indisputable business functions, and these are the inevitable consequences of the professionalization of the entire endeavor.
There is a pushback on this. Two college coaches have told SwimSwam that they have been told by recruits that their club coaches have recommended them to make a verbal commitment to a mid-major program to ‘hold a spot’ before continuing to push for placement on a Power 4 roster. This is a natural and opposing reaction to coaches making promises of roster spots to more athletes than they can accept – and hopefully a short-term correction as both sides adjust to the new rules and understand the new thresholds for athletes to earn spots on top 25 teams.
In the coming weeks, when stories shift from “commitments” to “decommitments” and “recommitments,” as a community we must show some grace. In many of these cases, the change of plans will not be driven by a change of heart, and to label these athletes as lacking some sort of integrity. The same is true of coaches: while they have known roster limits are coming for quite some time, ultimately I think they were left trying to figure out how those roster limits would actually shift the recruiting landscape and with deciding how they wanted to make those cuts.
I think things will balance out in a couple years as the new normal feels more normal, but it’s going to be an ugly few seasons in the meantime. We need to accept that on both sides, a lot of this is out of the control of anybody in swimming – but that as a sport, we can all continue to focus on the things that are within our control to create a healthier outlook for college swimming in the long-term.
We have to look at the opportunities, because the roster limits aren’t going away. Roster limits might mean more programs getting a chance to score more points at conference championship meets. They might mean shorter dual meets with fewer non-scoring heats. They might mean higher engagement from every member of a college swim team.
I am generally pessimistic about these changes being good for (or sustainable for) college athletics in the long run, but what I look to as a source of optimism is this: everyone has hated the way NIL and the transfer portal has impacted college football, and yet, college football television ratings continue to rise.
Maybe this is the kick-in-the-butt that swimming, a famously hard-to-move sport, needs to ignite some positive changes.
College football got there by being open and honest about the new world. Communicating with peers, communicating with coaches, communicating with athletes, communicating with the general public – those are things that football has done pretty well on their road to understanding their new world.
Can swimming do the same? What makes the whole thing feel nefarious is the operation in secret, behind closed doors, with everyone pretending like swimming is somehow ‘above all that,’ when in reality, we are now living in that same world. It’s time to pull back the curtain so that everyone understands what is happening and can react accordingly.
Does anyone know if the total number of D1 mens scholarships went up or down compared to the previous year? I understand that the caps will hurt overall participation, but if the total number of scholarships increase, it will also give kids the opportunity to continue swimming out of state if their family could not afford out of state tuition.
Some schools are expected to increase, some to decrease, some to stay the same. It’s too early to know what the net will be.
If you go from 9.9 to 30 scholarships or even 22 like the SEC, that is a heck of an increase. What worries me is that they increased scholarships for men’s basketball (2) and football (20). If you give out the additional 22 scholarships to men’s basketball and football, which they will, then you have to give out 22 scholarships to women before you even consider giving men’s swimming more due to Title IX.
So I think that this definitely will help women’s swimming in terms of overall scholarships. I have a feeling that this is just going to take more scholarships away from men’s swimming though. I hope I am wrong.
It sure would be amazing if all… Read more »
I have not heard of anybody increasing to unlimited scholarships yet. A few programs have said they have more, but none the full count.
Most assume Texas will get the full count, but nobody has specifically told me yet that they will.
That’s interesting! Thanks for responding!
Maybe I haven’t heard, but I thought that the SEC was capping their conference at 22 swimmers. If that is the case, Texas wouldn’t be able to hit the full 30 unless they found a loophole where they could redshirt 8 of them and/or put them on a “JV/Does not compete” type squad.
Ultimately if this causes men’s and women’s swimming to significantly increase the total number of scholarships, I think I will be happy and it will be good for swimming. There are so many great swimmers out there who quit swimming just because of the financial burden it takes to go out of State as a walk-on. If there is no… Read more »
The absence of a grandfathering, or phase in of the roster caps is absolutely insane. The only reason the lawyers and the judges are uninterested in protecting the 20-25% (or more) of athletes is because no one is representing the most common college student athlete – – the walk on.
I know this has been posted here before, but please consider signing this petition and sharing it.
https://www.change.org/p/protect-ncaa-athletes-from-house-vs-ncaa-setup-phased-rollout-grandfather-clause
I don’t understand the caps. If an additional 10 swimmers want to sign walk-on contracts with no NIL or scholarships, why not allow it? This is all BS! Let Universities decide what they want to fund. Don’t hurt the kids.
A walk-on still costs the athletic department money.
I think the issue us that schools may be legally required to pay athletes on the roster.
If that is the case then maybe they can write a contract that swimmers will receive x amount per meet they actually compete it. This allows for other kids to train and develop and try to make the actual competition team. No roster limits but the best swimmers who are scoring points get max benefits. Just a thought.
Yeah, maybe, if that’s allowed. I guess the devil’s in the details.
I like this idea. Swimmers who make the conference roster or NCAA would get obviously a lot more. It would be motivating yet give the coaches opportunity to develop the swimmers. It’s pretty rare to get a freshman who is at the performance level of an upperclassman
Schools will NOT be required to pay all athletes as a result of the House settlement. They will be allowed to spend up to approximately $20m per year – but they don’t have to do so and they can decide how to spend it (e.g., all $20m to football).
Same with scholarships. Under the House settlement, schools can provide full or partial scholarships to the entire roster of every sport, but, they are not required to do so.
The hard caps an awful unnecessary part of this settlement and, as a result, this House settlement will hurt many more student athletes that it will help.
Unfortunately, there are no lawyers lining up to help the walk on athletes because there… Read more »
I know a kid that was a walk on. He was kicked off the team at the tiniest of infractions (missing a Covid test due to illness and going the next day). He kept practicing to try to earn his way back. The coach told him he hated his ugly face and would have him kicked out of the pool and off campus frequently. I think a “no, roster limit” would have saved this kid from being berated and he could have looked elsewhere.
A B10 volleyball assistant coach told me she’s hearing contracts will be negotiable, for both scholarship % and NIL %, and the key point, for 2 years. It gives both the athlete some security and keeps the coaches from re-recruiting their roster each year. At the end of 2 yrs, either can renew, renegotiate or terminate the contract.
This is coach from a major school that directly impacts the terms of the settlement.
Take it fwiw as this situation is full of fluidity and rumors to say the least.
I think one way students could be protected in the event of a scholarship being pulled, write a “Buyout” clause in the contract stating that if a scholarship gets pulled for whatever reason then the school has to pay a fee for ending the contract.
Example
Swimmer A signs a scholarship agreement with College 1, that scholarship is Year to Year covering all tuition (Full Ride).
But, in the event the scholarship is not renewed, College 1 will pay Swimmer A $10,000 for non-renewal.
This will at least give the student some funds to cover any potential transfer and moving costs. But it also provides the school some flexibility in handling roster limits while limiting the impact… Read more »
Also, I hope that recruits in the next year who are potentially signing any sort of contract – you can negotiate any contract! You have the legal ability to negotiate clauses in your contract with any university should you be getting any sort of compensation. Want to protect yourself from getting scholarship cut during your 4 years? Add an addendum to your agreement stating some sort of consequences should your scholarship be terminated! Add a non-renewal fee clause, tell them you won’t sign unless you’re protected in some sort of event. As much as this can be a scary time, recruits actually have a lot of power now and should not be afraid to use it.
I like these kind of ideas. Sounds like union talk to me. Who is negotiating for the athletes at this point?
I really don’t under how this is going to shake out. Power 4 Coaches will not be able to develop 1:35 200 freestylers into 1:31 freestylers because you cannot waste valuable roster spots on projects.
Some really good swimmers are going to have to swim for the club team and hope they get picked up for the university squad their sophomore year.
It’s for sure going to put a lot more pressure on mid-major, D2, and D3 coaches to develop those 1:35 freestylers into 1:31 freestylers. Some mid-major programs already operate at that level and just don’t necessarily get the talent. Others are going to have to change the “just happy to be here” mindset.
Grant House – I hope you run out of toilet paper when you need it the most.
And Michael Andrew who has been posting all over his socials with Grant House. Grant House has single handedly ruined the sport (and a lot of college athletics) he supposedly loves.
I don’t think division 2 or 3 will have the same limits. Those two divisions could see some growth as kids are cut due to roster limits.
And it better swimmers will be swimming in d2 and d3.