AUSTIN – The historic House v. The NCAA settlement was given a nod of approval by U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken earlier this month.
Some people are still wondering how the University of Texas plans to construct a football roster given that full approval is anticipated before the start of the 2025-26 academic year.
The current FBS scholarship limit is 85, but terms of the settlement also say that scholarship restrictions must be abolished. However, with regard to the enrollment lists, schools will now be allowed but not compelled to give scholarships. New restrictions include a $500,000 minimum team salary in ’95 and a roster limit of 105 players for football.
While in theory, for the 2025 Longhorns, Sarkisian could start signing 13 signees over the next two classes, that is not the route Sarkisian is currently taking at the moment.
“I don’t think we can do that yet,” Sarkisian said Monday morning in his weekly press conference on the show. I think that we have to play by the yard that things are what they are because the last thing I want to do is to go in with commitments and then the next thing they tell me you only have 85 [scholarships] and then what do I tell the seven, eight, 10 kids? I don’t feel that’s the right thing to do is why we will go ahead and act like it’s 85 until they further change it, then we will adapt at that time.
I still would not like it if it went the other way and, well… nasty. Perhaps other schools may perhaps afford to do that, but not here. I didn’t think that would go down too well.”
Sarkisian may see this as on the back burner until there is full approval, but the last time this was publicly discussed with his athletic director, it seemed as if it was going to be a done topic, at least in Texas.
“We’re still in the process of doing all that, but to me, you got 85 scholarships, you have the roster at 105, there’s plenty of muchachos out there to practice with,” Chris Del Conte said Aug. 23 after Cotton Holdings was introduced as the title sponsor for the Lone Star Showdown between Texas and Texas A&M.
Well, if Texas maintained their number at 85 and wanted to get to the roster limit 105, they’d take 20 walk-ons, but that’s fewer than most FBS programs even have. Which is precisely why reducing the number of walk-ons a team has been criticized by coaches and fans and would be so if it should turn out that way.
Sarkisian has famously been a loud advocate of hanging on to walk-ons, however that it may look.
Nevertheless, in the May at SEC spring Meetings Sarkisian stated that he had about 35 walk-on, for the total of 120. The list of players in the Texas team is standing at 117 players hence 32 are walk-ons. Of those 32 walk-ons, one is Sarkisian’s son, Brady, a second-year linebacker.
Speaking of the roster cap figure at SEC Spring Meetings in May of this year, Sarkisian said: “I am optimistic we will be able to agree on something that is a pretty number.” Once more I made no objection to change. You know, circumstances are going to change, alright. But hopefully we can find a reasonable number to where we still feel like we can operate at a high level as coaches and for our players.”
