After seeing their seasons cut short due to the COVID-19 outbreak, spring sport athletes received a bit of good news Monday as the NCAA’s Division I Council voted to extend an extra year of eligibility for those affected by this year’s cancellations. While the NCAA voted to provide additional eligibility for spring sport athletes, it did not do the same for winter sport athletes, many of whom saw their championships canceled.
“The Council’s decision gives individual schools the flexibility to make decisions at a campus level,” said Council chair M. Grace Calhoun, athletics director at Penn. “The Board of Governors encouraged conferences and schools to take action in the best interest of student-athletes and their communities, and now schools have the opportunity to do that.”
Monday’s decision will allow schools to carry more scholarship players in spring sports to account for incoming recruits as well as seniors who decide to return for their additional year. Due to the financial uncertainty of many schools, the decision allows universities to determine the amount of scholarship aide given to returning seniors. Schools will not be required to meet the same level of scholarship aide provided to players from the past season. For example, a player who received a half scholarship this past year might only be offered a quarter scholarship for next season.
Seniors will not be the only players affected by Monday’s decision. While the NCAA limits student-athletes to four seasons of competition in a five-year period, schools will now be able to self-apply waivers to restore one of those seasons of competition for any player who competed in the 2020 spring season.
The Council also increased the roster limit in baseball for student-athletes impacted by this year’s shortened season. Baseball was the only spring sport with such a limit.
Earlier this month, Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne said the university was “supportive of the spring sports being able to adjust the rosters and if a student-athlete would like to come back, that they have the ability to do so.” However, he did foreshadow some potential financial stumbling blocks in the process. For example, equivalency sports such as baseball don’t provide full scholarships and would need their athletes to make the choice of investing thousands of dollars into furthering their collegiate careers if they chose to come back.
“You hate for kids in college to have to make decisions on money,” Alabama baseball coach Brad Bohannon told BamaInsider earlier this month. “I would imagine we’ve got a bunch of older kids that their first thought is, ‘Heck yeah I’d love to play, but do I really want to take out another 20 or 30 grand in student loans?' Those are tough, real-life decisions that our families are going to have to make.”
The NCAA did not announce how much it will increase its roster size in baseball. Depending on the status of this year's Major League Baseball draft, overcrowding could still be an issue. Because college baseball programs expect a certain amount of players and recruits to depart for the draft, they generally recruit to compensate for those losses. The NCAA had previously set baseball roster limits at 35 players and restricted the number of players on scholarship to 27.
“When you sign scholarships in November, you’re doing that with your best guess of who’s going to be back,” Bohannon explained. “If there’s no draft and every draft-eligible player on our team is back and every kid we signed in the fall is here, the math is not going to work for any Southeastern Conference team.”
WestGate Luxury Condos - To be any closer, you'd need a ticket
Andrew Bone, of BamaInsider.com, is a real estate broker in the state of Alabama.
Contact Andrew Bone for all of your real estate needs; buyers, sellers, investors, developers. Property management; BoneHomeTours.com Call 205-531-5577 or click here
