The SEC and Big Ten are discussing roster limits of 23 men and 35 women, respectively, for their swimming & diving programs, with both swimmers and divers counting as 1 athlete on those rosters. These new roster limits would take effect for the 2025-2026 season, with no significant easing-in-period.
According to sources, the SEC met about three weeks before the US Olympic Trials, in late May, and came up with a number of 23 men and 35 women. Big Ten coaches met two weeks later and came up with numbers of 30 men and 35 women, with both conferences expected to ultimately match at the lower number for men.
While other conferences won’t be bound by those numbers, as the two power brokers in college athletics, the SEC and Big Ten are expected to drive what happens elsewhere.
Last Friday, these numbers, along with numbers for other sports, went to mediation or arbitration to be finalized. SwimSwam could not confirm that the numbers were finalized.
These numbers are very similar to the 22 and 35 that SwimSwam first reported in May as an SEC proposal. The number for football teams is expected to land between 100 and 110 athletes.
The moves are all in response to ongoing litigation and rules changes regarding student-athletes and their share of revenues generated by athletics departments, including them being declared employees. Athletics departments across the country are now ranking their programs by different criteria and evaluating how they might reduce sports and/or budgets for those programs to deal with new rules, regulations, and settlements.
What remains to be seen is whether scholarships will count as ‘revenue sharing,’ and how Title IX regulations will be applied to topics of revenue sharing and Name, Image, and Likeness.
Below, SwimSwam has compiled, and averaged, the number of athletes on each Big Ten and SEC roster for last season to give an idea of how many roster spots will be impacted. This information is based on federally-submitted data, meaning that it won’t always reflect perfectly what happens on the ground (swimmers getting injured, quitting the team, etc.) but is the best count available.
In both conferences, men’s rosters are, on average, slightly smaller than women’s rosters. While a few women’s rosters, like Indiana, will be impacted pretty significantly by the new roster limits, many others won’t be impacted at all.
Several coaches that SwimSwam spoke with said that the impact on the men’s rosters is more significant – both because the number is so low, and because men generally develop more once they arrive in college than women. A roster of 23 would dramatically impact the ability of men’s programs to hold varsity spots for developmental swimmers, though some have floated proposals about using a non-varsity club team to skirt some of that.
Some schools may implement tighter restrictions as a cost control measure. There is currently no mandated roster limit, though schools often use roster limits in sports like swimming for budgeting and Title IX balancing purposes.
Ultimately, these new rules are going to have an enormous impact on collegiate athletics, barring any last-minute reprieve by an American congress that has been wont in recent months to pass any substantial legislation.
Big Ten Rosters, 2023-2024
| School | Men | Women |
| Illinois | X | 33 |
| Indiana | 37 | 48 |
| Iowa | X | 22 |
| Michigan | 37 | 35 |
| Minnesota | 27 | 31 |
| Nebraska | X | 23 |
| Northwestern | 24 | 30 |
| Ohio State | 42 | 35 |
| Penn State | 30 | 39 |
| Purdue | 37 | 44 |
| Rutgers | X | 29 |
| UCLA | X | 43 |
| USC | 34 | 31 |
| Wisconsin | 31 | 29 |
| Average | 33.22 | 33.71 |
SEC Rosters, 2023-2024
| School | Men | Women |
| Alabama | 31 | 37 |
| Arkansas | X | 24 |
| Auburn | 39 | 38 |
| Florida | 47 | 39 |
| Georgia | 40 | 37 |
| Kentucky | 28 | 41 |
| LSU | 31 | 34 |
| Missouri | 29 | 29 |
| South Carolina | 31 | 44 |
| Tennessee | 38 | 45 |
| Texas | 44 | 35 |
| Texas A&M | 38 | 48 |
| Vanderbilt | X | 29 |
| 36.00 | 38.82 |
This is just the first step toward the elimination of Olympic Sports on college campuses. The madness and greed to grab every TV dollar for revenue-generating sports lead the power conferences to create nationwide conferences. This will lead to big dollars for the schools and sports that draw massive TV ratings, but Olympic Sports and college teams that do not draw big TV ratings will end up getting cut. Now that athletes on non-revenue sports will be getting paid to represent the university, it will be even more expensive for the universities to support these sports. Dont get me wrong, athletes should have been getting paid for decades, but the new model does not work for sports like Swimming, Track,… Read more »
Men’s swimming has been the Ottoman Empire of college sports for years. Unfortunately, this might be the equivalent of WWI for it.
How can they not have a phase in period? Kids have been working toward these goals their entire lives – many swimmers chose schools based on having a roster spot. Now the conferences are going to kill 30% of roster spots in one year?
Figure out a way to grandfather current swimmers and take some time to implement the roster caps. Don’t kick kids to the curb.
They might not have a choice.
I have followed the case pretty closely. As I understand it, the justices distinguished between sports that generate revenue for schools and those that don’t. In the case of the former, they suggested that those athletes may be considered employees. In the case of the latter, they would likely not be employees.
If the law continues to develop and distinguish between revenue generating and non-revenue generating employees, why would the conferences need to make such move? The incremental cost of rostering non-scholarship athletes (swimmers) is negligible if the schools do not have pay them or otherwise treat them as employees.
Furthermore, what happens to international athletes (swimmers)? They are here on student visas and not eligible to be employees and/or… Read more »
School administrators don’t view the incremental costs as minimal (which they are); they view every athlete as a liability/risk/cost. For example, the big conferences gave all athletes the distribution last year, not just those on scholarship. The administrators want easy budgeting and tracking and not to have to worry about how many athletes are in each of the non-rev sports. This is magnified by the uncertainty. Administrators want it as simple as possible.
Take it up to the courts. Im sure 99% of the people here on swimswam.. in the comments section, value swimming and agree lol
They need a system that is applied to all sports. They care about football cause it funds everything. The rest is a luxury.
23 seems like a weird number. 24 is 6 swimmers/divers per class. Make it 24 and then require the schools to only bring in 6 kids each year. The problem would be solved in 4 years and none of the existing kids would be impacted.
The issue is that name swimmers/divers won’t make it all 4 years on the varsity team, whether due to personal, academic, physical, or any other reasons. I started out in a class of 14 and graduated with a class of 5 at a men’s power 5 swim and dive program
Warm up the transfer portal!
At the time Big Ten came up with it’s proposal to limit rosters to 30 men, it seems almost certain the Big Ten was aware of the SEC’s proposal to limit men’s rosters to 23.
Mr. Keith – Why are you so confident that the Big Ten would agree to 23 (not saying you’re wrong but just curious what information you have to make this conclusion)?
Most conferences only score 17 or 18 athletes anyway, right? Schools will be less likely to take a flyer on a diamond in the rough, but I don’t think it’ll impact as much as we think it might – “distance swimmers have to go to d3 now” type of comments are too dramatic.
Men’s diving and distance swimming is going to take a hit not just with roster spots, but with the possibility that schools and conferences will all together question whether or not those events are necessary anymore. The trickle down effect will be that our men’s Olympic team won’t be as well rounded anymore either.
If it’s 23 roster spots, and 2 go to divers and 2 go to distance swimmers, that leaves 19 for the rest of the team. An impossible number really when you consider injuries, eligibility issues, team behavioral issues, quitting, etc. so the first to go would be either the divers or the distance swimmers in situations like that. Dual meet formats will change. NCAA formats… Read more »