A significant NCAA rule change is forthcoming as it pertains to scholarships and roster limits, as the conferences have agreed on the new roster sizes and scholarship adjustments as part of the settlement to the House case.
That includes the new roster limit for football, which will move from 85 to a 105-man roster limit.
At the 2024 ACC Football Kickoff on Wednesday, Wake Forest head coach Dave Clawson discussed what he sees as “unfortunate consequences” of the increased scholarships/roster size for football, and the biggest challenges that he believes will come from it.
“Well, I think part of it is the smartest way to get to 105. I can’t imagine suddenly everyone is going to take 20 more high school players. I think it’s trying to predict now what is roster turnover going to look like every year,” Clawson said.
“With everything that’s done, there’s going to be unfortunate consequences. The days of the walk-on in college football are probably leaving us. We’ve had some incredible walk-on success stories at Wake Forest. Grant Dawson was a walk-on that became a captain. Jack Freudenthal was a walk-on that became a captain for us. Nick Andersen was a walk-on that had three interceptions against Virginia Tech, was on NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt. That was one of our best players, a scholarship player.”
Clawson added that now, “unfortunately those success stories are going to be fewer and far between” with increased scholarships that will be available to give out.
“But that is what the courts are telling us that we have to do,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any college football coach that likes eliminating walk-ons. What’s basically been told to us by the courts is the way that we’ve been operating is illegal, so this is going to be the next evolution of college football rosters.”
The new roster limits will take effect in the 2025-26 season.
“I don’t think anybody knows exactly how it’s going to play out ’cause we’re all doing this for the first time,” Clawson said.
“I try to focus on Wake Forest in the best way to build a competitive and championship program at Wake Forest. I still think for us, it’s going to be recruiting players that love the game of football, that their academics and the quality of our degree matters to them, that are high character, and we have to have enough collective or revenue-sharing resources to keep our best players.”
–Photo courtesy Nell Redmond/ACC
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