Future of Division III

[maripp2002]

Which essentially amounted to giving someone a track scholarship but then strongly encouraging them to also join the football team.

That would work out MUCH better if your D1 sports were football or oddly essentially cheerleading. The old scholarship limits were barely enough to give partial scholarships to fill out a roster. The new roster limits are much higher, but my thoughts are the vast majority of programs aren't going to offer that many scholarships, especially if they're not making any money off the sports. And all but power 4 schools are probably going to opt out of that, and just stick to the old scholarship model.

https://blog.sportsrecruits.com/2025/06/13/ncaa-roster-limits-explained-what-every-recruit-family-needs-to-know/

As much as I'd enjoy it, I don't see anyone filling out a rowing program with 68 full scholarships. I say this mostly because I've never once seen collegiate rowing on television, espn+, or even on youtube. I watch a lot of weird sports, so if I've never seen it, it's probably not bringing in any money - and throwing a full FCS football team's worth of scholarships at a sport like that just seems laughable.

[IC798891]

What you describe is absolutely the rationale for closing that loophole in the early 1990s, yes.

Sometimes gossip is right!

[IC798891]

Which essentially amounted to giving someone a track scholarship but then strongly encouraging them to also join the football team.

That would work out MUCH better if your D1 sports were football or oddly essentially cheerleading. The old scholarship limits were barely enough to give partial scholarships to fill out a roster.

But even a few thousand dollars for a partial scholarship to track might be enough to sway him to come to your school. Once he's there, even if he's lower on the track totem pole for you, he might still be the fastest dude on a football field. So you convince him to concentrate on football, and even if it doesn't impact the track team that much, and you have a D1 caliber athlete (raw perhaps, but still there) on a D3 roster.