Michigan Football: What removing scholarship cap means

With the NCAA getting rid of scholarship limits, here’s what that could mean for Michigan football and other programs like it.

As I’ve mentioned in prior articles, the world of college football is changing right before our very eyes seemingly every week, and honestly, every day.

We have now gotten to the point where high school recruits and college football players can make millions in NIL, the transfer portal has become the Wild West, conferences will start to realign in 2023, with the biggest being Texas and Oklahoma moving to the SEC, conferences will be free to decide their two championship opponents as I wrote about here, and now, the NCAA is looking at eliminating the scholarship limit for D-I football programs.

The first step was taken on Wednesday as the initial counter which limited schools to signing 25 recruits per cycle was eliminated, at least for the next two years.

Before, a school could lose 10-20 players to the portal and/or the draft and only be able to replace the players with 25 recruits, but if that cap is gone, there is no limit on the number of recruits a team can take.

How does this affect Michigan football?

Well, obviously, this means everything. Michigan football now won’t have to worry about balancing its recruiting classes, as it can take any number of recruits at any position that it wants. If the Wolverines want to recruit 10 offensive lineman, and only two running backs, they can do that.

I doubt that this would be their strategy in any recruiting class, but if they wanted to do this, they could. This goes for any position on the field, as I mentioned. They now have no excuses for recruiting positions that may lack depth on paper. They can just replenish that position with recruits. The roster limit for all teams still is 85 total though.

Obviously, admissions is still going to restrict some of Michigan football’s recruits, which will be a major annoyance, but at this point, we know what Michigan is, it’s not going to change anytime soon, so we just have to deal with it.

Obviously, this also means that Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia, Texas A&M, and all of these elite recruiting schools will get even more recruits, but again, this also benefits Michigan too.

Nothing is ever going to just benefit Michigan and programs like Michigan, alone. NIL, the transfer portal, and now this scholarship restriction elimination will always benefit the cheaters just as much, if not more than, programs like Michigan. It’s the way it is.

Now though, at least Michigan football will be able to have depth for the foreseeable future on the roster, and won’t have to dip into the transfer portal for young talent, only to find a veteran one-or-two year bridge player.

The NCAA has only approved this new rule for two years, probably to test and see how it does, but that means Michigan’s 2023 and 2024 classes won’t have scholarship limits. This also coincides with the Dante Moore and CJ Carr recruitments, which are ongoing and have been a roller coaster of highs and lows.

If Michigan can get back on track with this 2023 class now knowing they have no restrictions (besides admissions) we should hopefully start to see more urgency out of the staff and an uptick in commits. We’ve been saying this for a while though. Nothing has happened, so we will just see.

Michigan football fans, what do you think of this new NCAA rule? Do the positives outweigh the negatives? Sound off in the comments below!