50 years ago schools could have all the players they could afford. Soon they will again.

When the NCAA was founded in 1906 (as the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States) there were no discussions about paying players, transfers, or redshirt years. At the time, schools could offer scholarships to as many players as they could afford. It wouldn’t be until 1973 that they actually set a limit on roster size for football teams. The restrictive 105 scholarship limit was a reaction to Title IX passed by Congress the previous year in an effort to free up some of the scholarship money for female athletes. The numbers would be adjusted again in 1978 down to 95 and finally in 1992 to the current 85 scholarship limit.

Between the current NIL landscape and the explorations on the part of the NCAA of letting schools pay students directly, we are about to enter a new era of college athletics. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to free agency.

It might be a silly thing to consider, but I am gonna get loud about it.

Everything Old is New Again

Prior to 1973, schools could have as many players on the football team as they could afford. Alabama routinely had 150 players on the roster. Notre Dame was basically printing its own money when it came to the football team. If you go back and look, most schools’ rosters from the first half of the 20^th century only list players who “lettered” and routinely have 80 or more names, but the photos show over 100 smiling faces.

Since winning games was about buying bodies, smaller schools never had a chance. So I will no longer recognize any national title banner hung before scholarship limits. Update the counts and a lot of the “blue bloods” lose the title. There are now only 44 National Champions in the history of College Football. If I wanted to get really onery about it, I would throw out everything prior to the BCS too. Before the computers got involved it was decided by national polls. Since no one on the East coast is staying up to watch any football played west of the Rockies in 2023, we can be pretty sure voters had no idea most of the Western schools not named USC even existed in the 80s and 90s.

Clearly we never learned from our history, so now we are doomed to repeat it. We are going back to paying for players, and it means we have to reset the count again. National titles will be about who could buy the best roster. Just like the pros. But a year of a college athlete’s eligibility is currently a much smaller investment than a multi-year, partially guaranteed, incentivized pro contract. With the exception of some wildly over-bid pay-outs. (Glances sideways at USC, TAMU and Texas.)