Some knowledge, but a lot of ignorance in this thread.

Roster size: Before school starts or the first game, the roster is limited to 105 with a max of 85 scholarship players. The non-scholarship players are are preferred walkons. After the first game or school starts, whichever comes first, other walkons can join. There is no official limit. Scholarships are good for 1 year. They must be renewed.

When it comes to new scholarships, it gets a little complicated because there are really two governing bodies that overlap, but not completely. The National Letter of Intent governs signings, the NCAA governs actual awarding and enrollments (i.e. counters).

There is a limit of 25 signings. EEs don't count as a signing. The NCAA has a limit of 25 initial counters in a year, but if you didn't use all of them in the previous year, they let you back count an EE to use up that space. Thus you can have more than 25 in a given year.

The max number that can get in a given year then is calculated as follows:

quote:
25 + (25 - (total who actually enrolled the previous year) + (the previous year's EEs that were counted backwards then))

Because of the multi-year effect, and the record keeping needed, it's not the easiest thing to keep track of, and the only people who know for sure are the administration.

The signing rule came into play because schools were oversigning with players who had no chance of qualifying and since they never enrolled, the initial counter rule never came into play. The powers that be didn't like the optics of this, so they added the rule to limit it.

Since scholarships are limited to 1 year, the 85 only limits the number of new counters as a matter of choice. If space is needed and the coaches want it, players get "processed" one way or another.