Saving Walk-On Athletes: Why NCAA Roster Limits Need Practice Squads

As the NCAA’s proposed roster limits threaten to displace thousands of athletes, adding practice squads offers a way to preserve opportunities

Nov 27, 2010; Madison, WI, USA; Wisconsin Badgers defensive tackle J.J. Watt (99) celebrates while holding a rose following the game against the Northwestern Wildcats at Camp Randall Stadium. Wisconsin defeated Northwestern 70-23 to win the Big Ten. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images / Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images

The NCAA’s preliminarily approved House v. NCAA settlement is poised to dismantle the traditional boundaries between amateurism and professionalization in college sports. If formally approved, several structural changes within college athletics will begin in the 2025-26 academic year. The final hearing is scheduled for April 7. 

The settlment's highly publicized revenue-sharing model, which allows institutions that opt in to compensate athletes up to $20,500,000 annually in addition to scholarships and traditional athlete benefits, has received the majority of media attention.

The change ushers in an era of professionalization that has already led to the hiring of general managers and the acquisition of front-office tools at the college level. 

In conjunction with revenue sharing, the NCAA has also added another novel professional concept that will be applied to college athletes for the first time: roster limits.

Historically, the NCAA regulated the number of scholarships a team could offer but not the total roster size. FBS football teams can grant up to 85 full scholarships while fielding average rosters of 128 players, leaving roughly 43 walk-ons to chase their dreams without financial aid. 

Under the settlement, football teams would have no restrictions on scholarship allotment, but they would be capped at 105 players, cutting around 23 roster spots per team. Across the 134 FBS programs, over 3,000 athletes could lose the chance to play.

While the settlement has yet to receive full approval, its ripple effects are already felt preemptively, particularly by the thousands of athletes occupying depth positions on collegiate rosters.

In a recent article, New NCAA Roster Limits: The Death of the Walk-On Athlete, I explored the unsettling implications of these changes. While the title may verge on sensationalism, the reality remains stark: thousands of athletes across all sports will face displacement, marking a significant shift in the college athletics landscape.

Athletes will have to choose to give up their ability to play the sport they have worked tirelessly at or uproot their lives through the transfer portal and start a new somewhere else. The human cost of athlete transfer is high: sacrificing friends and relationships, their programs of study, and non-transferable academic credits. 

Many athletes around the country are greatly concerned about this change. John Weidenbach, a sophomore walk-on linebacker at the University of Michigan and member of the House v. NCAA plaintiff class, expressed his frustrations regarding the settlement in a letter to the court. Like thousands of athletes around the country, he faces the unfortunate reality that his roster spot may soon disappear:

An excerpt from the letter reads:

Many student-athletes will benefit financially from the proposed settlement in this case, but I wish to express that there are thousands of others, like me, who don’t expect anything from it. Those student-athletes, mostly walk-ons, earned a spot on their team, show up to practice every day, and embody every aspect of what it means to be a student-athlete without any care as to compensation. Yet, thousands of them will be cut—unnecessarily—the moment the settlement is approved

The House v. NCAA settlement has been drafted to serve as a de facto Collective Bargaining Agreement for college athletics. Without student-athletes having employment status, athletes cannot unionize and collectively bargain for their working conditions like their professional peers. 

The settlement’s concepts, such as revenue sharing, salary caps, anti-salary cap manipulation rules, and roster limits, are commonplace within professional leagues and implemented through each league’s respective CBA. In professional sports, those rules are negotiated between the respective league offices and player unions, unlike the NCAA’s attempts to do so through an antitrust litigation settlement.  

The Trump administration’s return to power will further delay efforts to recognize student-athletes as employees under the NLRB. This is part of why the House settlement is such a unique document for enshrining earning rights for athletes, but it is also why student-athletes have been left out of the bargaining process. Walk-ons and non-starters are in the crosshairs of the negative impacts of this change without any ability to advocate and bargain for their interests. 

The NCAA has previously been handed defeats to their restrictions on athletic scholarships; in 2020, Alston v. NCAA removed the ability for the NCAA to cap scholarship allotment for academically related payments to student-athletes. The posturing of the court in the unanimous decision indicated that previously acceptable practices of the NCAA could be analyzed under much harsher scrutiny moving forward. 

It would not be surprising for the NCAA to face legal challenges to its current scholarship limits. If previous rulings are indicative, those scholarship limits could likely violate federal antitrust laws. Instead of facing litigation, the NCAA aims to use roster limits in the settlement to maintain roster control without scholarship limits. 

While an antitrust challenge to roster limits is still possible, the prevalence of roster limits in virtually every iteration of commercialized athletics would give the NCAA a much better chance in court than the current system of imposing scholarship limitations. 

The roster-limit changes will result in disastrous life changes for thousands of athletes. In a letter to the court, I explain the need for a practice squad within the college ranks to preserve walk-on players' opportunities while adapting to a more professionalized model. The full letter can be found here. 

With a practice squad, every team will be entitled to carry up to 20% of its sports roster limit as a developmental unit. Athletes who occupy these spots will not be permitted to travel with the team, dress for home games, receive a scholarship, or receive Alston payments.

However, they will be able to obtain priority admission to the respective universities, attend practices, and utilize athletic resources made available to all rostered athletes. Time on a practice squad will also count toward collegiate athletic eligibility. 

This will allow many athletes currently burdened with making a challenging choice to either be forced into early retirement or test the portal a chance to remain in a similar role with their teams even after the changes occur next season and not uproot the practice dynamics and development pipelines coaches have been long accustomed to using. 

This concept is not entirely foreign to college sports. Women’s basketball programs have long utilized scout programs consisting of skilled men’s basketball players who attend the school as non-athletes to scrimmage. At many institutions, scout teams can provide a pathway to earning a walk-on opportunity on the men’s team.

To implement a practice squad across all sports, the NCAA must unilaterally or through the settlement modify its current bylaws to tailor this solution to its upcoming professional model. Currently, scout team players are limited in the benefits they can receive and must maintain the exact eligibility prerequisites of any student-athlete. 

Scout team players are only allowed apparel, access to training facilities and treatment, and food reasonably necessary for practice. Anything else the athletic department gives a scout team player that exceeds what any non-student athlete at the institution is able to receive is a violation. 

While scout team players often mirror the functions of many players occupying walk-on spots, their experience falls far below the standard of benefits walk-on student-athletes enjoy. Enabling “practice squad players” full athletic benefits, such as access to weight rooms, nutritionists, tutors, etc., restricted only to student-athletes, can mitigate the harms of roster limits. 

Allowing collegiate practice squads will usher in a new generation of walk-on athletes, accomplish the NCAA’s legal goals, and preserve the interests of those harmed by the upcoming settlement within a decades-old scout team framework.