Swinney Comments on ‘Frustrating’ Scholarship Increase for Football

During his press conference at the 2024 ACC Football Kickoff in Charlotte on Thursday, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney went in-depth with his thoughts on the proposed new roster sizes and scholarship adjustments for college sports.

The scholarship limit for football is expected to move from 85 to a new 105-man roster limit.

“The crazy thing is there’s not many coaches that want 105 scholarships. We want to keep our walk-ons,” Swinney said. “It’s hard to manage that many guys, and when you have that many guys on scholarship… You think you’ve got transfers now? You wait till that number gets there, it’s gonna change a lot of things.”

Swinney added that it’s a “product” of the House settlement, and he gets that. He also said the increased scholarships are “great for baseball” and some of the other sports, but for football, the “unintended consequence is it basically eliminates your walk-ons, and there’s no coach that wants that.”

“It’s a really sad thing to me,” he said.

Swinney added that the elimination of walk-ons with the 105-man scholarship roster is “frustrating.”

“We’re going to play more games than we’ve ever played, practice more than we’ve ever played, finish longer than we’ve ever played, and we’re going to have the smallest roster we’ve ever had,” he said. “Again, it’s not like they said, ‘Hey, no walk-ons’ – that’s just what happened when it was settled, that you can’t limit scholarships anymore.”