How An Extra Year Of Eligibility Affects Notre Dame’s Roster Construction

Every college football coach’s already arduous challenge of roster management just became a bigger headache for the next few years.

The NCAA Division I Board of Directors said this football season — whether it is played in the fall, the spring or not at all — will not count toward a player’s eligibility. Everyone gets a freebie. Players otherwise out of eligibility after this year can come back and will not count against a team’s 85-scholarship limit. The school is not required to renew scholarship for seniors, and seniors can move on at their choosing.

The ruling was inevitable. Fall sports are operating on shaky ground, and the NCAA granted the same protection to spring sport athletes. The rule does, though, create some oddities and additional hurdles for roster construction.

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Rosters for the 2021 season won’t be too difficult to manage, since any member of the senior class who returns won’t count against the scholarship cap. There will be reset expectations of playing time, future difficult personnel decisions or further NCAA rules, and university decisions regarding the level of increase in athletic scholarship money.

There will be three types of “freshmen” next year: regular freshmen who will sign this year (class of 2021), redshirt freshmen in their first year on campus (class of 2020) who will still have five years to play four seasons and players who will be academically classified as juniors (class of 2019) but still have four years left to play (if they redshirted 2019).