Division I roster limits after House v. NCAA
At schools that opt into the settlement, sport-by-sport scholarship caps are gone. Roster limits replaced them. A participating school may offer athletically related aid to every athlete on that roster. It is not required to. This table is the ceiling — not a promise of a full ride.
Effective 2025-26 at participating schools · Last checked 2026-09-01
Read this first
Opt-in only. Power-conference defendants had to participate. Other Division I schools choose, with notice by March 1 for a later academic year. Schools that stay out keep the older, lower scholarship limits from the 2024–25 Division I Manual. A conference may set a roster cap below the NCAA figure, but not below that sport’s old scholarship limit.
Ceiling, not funding. “Potential increase” is roster limit minus the old equivalency or headcount. It is the most new full-ride seats a school could create in that sport if it fully funded the cap. Many will not. Athletic aid remains optional — including partial equivalencies. The first $2.5 million of new athletics aid above 2024–25 sport limits counts against the school’s revenue-sharing benefits cap; amounts above that do not.
Not a walk-on ban, and not a roster expansion everywhere. Football, baseball, and men’s basketball caps sit below the squads those sports used to carry, so unrecruited seats got scarcer. Women’s rowing’s cap (68) sits well above the old typical roster. Designated student-athletes identified at 2025–26 implementation are exempt from the cap for the rest of their eligibility — a grandfather, not a recruiting strategy.
Women’s Division I sports
Basketball did not move. The large increases sit in rowing, acrobatics, equestrian, rugby, and track — sports that also do Title IX participation work when football rosters grow.
| Sport | Prior scholarship cap | Roster / aid ceiling | Potential increase |
|---|---|---|---|
| Acrobatics & TumblingNCAA championship sport as of 2026 (first championship spring 2027). Large roster; funding is optional. | 14 | 55 | +41 |
| BasketballNo change. Already a 15-headcount sport. | 15 | 15 | — |
| Beach Volleyball | 6 | 19 | +13 |
| Bowling | 5 | 11 | +6 |
| Cross CountrySeparate from track. Dual-sport athletes count on each roster they train or compete on; 45+17 is not an official combined cap. | 6 | 17 | +11 |
| EquestrianLarge-roster sport often used in Title IX participation math. | 15 | 50 | +35 |
| Fencing | 5 | 24 | +19 |
| Field Hockey | 12 | 27 | +15 |
| Golf | 6 | 9 | +3 |
| Gymnastics | 12 | 20 | +8 |
| Ice Hockey | 18 | 26 | +8 |
| Lacrosse | 12 | 38 | +26 |
| RowingLargest women’s cap. Old typical rosters were ~42 — this is a ceiling, not a mandate to roster 68. | 20 | 68 | +48 |
| Rugby | 12 | 36 | +24 |
| Skiing | 7 | 16 | +9 |
| Soccer | 14 | 28 | +14 |
| SoftballSome early recaps listed 28. NCAA/CSC tables are 25. | 12 | 25 | +13 |
| StuntWomen’s championship sport as of 2026 (first championship spring 2027). CSC lists it as women’s, not mixed. | 14 | 65 | +51 |
| Swimming & Diving | 14 | 30 | +16 |
| Tennis | 8 | 10 | +2 |
| Track & FieldIndoor and outdoor are each capped at 45 — not a combined 90. Do not publish 62 as a Track/XC NCAA limit. | 18 | 45 | +27 |
| Triathlon | 6.5 | 14 | +7.5 |
| Volleyball | 12 | 18 | +6 |
| Water Polo | 8 | 24 | +16 |
| Wrestling | 10 | 30 | +20 |
Men’s Division I sports
Football's new ceiling is 105 (FBS was an 85-headcount sport; FCS was 63). Baseball's jump from 11.7 equivalencies to 34 roster seats is the other headline. Neither number is a requirement to fund every seat.
| Sport | Prior scholarship cap | Roster / aid ceiling | Potential increase |
|---|---|---|---|
| BaseballCap is below the old average squad (~41). Walk-on seats got tighter. | 11.7 | 34 | +22.3 |
| BasketballAlready a headcount sport. Cap is below the old average squad (~17). | 13 | 15 | +2 |
| Cross CountrySeparate from track. Dual-sport athletes count on each roster they train or compete on; 45+17 is not an official combined cap. | 5 | 17 | +12 |
| Fencing | 4.5 | 24 | +19.5 |
| Football85 was the FBS headcount; FCS was 63. Opt-in DI football is capped at 105. Prior average squads were larger (~124), so walk-on seats shrank. | 85 | 105 | +20 |
| Golf | 4.5 | 9 | +4.5 |
| Gymnastics | 6.3 | 20 | +13.7 |
| Ice Hockey | 18 | 26 | +8 |
| Lacrosse | 12.6 | 48 | +35.4 |
| Skiing | 6.3 | 16 | +9.7 |
| Soccer | 9.9 | 28 | +18.1 |
| Swimming & Diving | 9.9 | 30 | +20.1 |
| Tennis | 4.5 | 10 | +5.5 |
| Track & FieldIndoor and outdoor are each capped at 45 — not a combined 90. Do not publish 62 as a Track/XC NCAA limit. | 12.6 | 45 | +32.4 |
| Volleyball | 4.5 | 18 | +13.5 |
| Water Polo | 4.5 | 24 | +19.5 |
| Wrestling | 9.9 | 30 | +20.1 |
Mixed / coed sports
| Sport | Prior scholarship cap | Roster / aid ceiling | Potential increase |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rifle | 3.6 | 12 | +8.4 |
What secondary sites get wrong
ScholarshipStats.com (shutting down at the end of 2026) publishes a combined “Track / X-C” cap of 62. That is 45 + 17. Indoor track, outdoor track, and cross country are three roster limits. NCAA and the College Sports Commission list track at 45 and cross country at 17. We do not add them.
Some 2025 recaps listed softball at 28. The CSC table — and the settlement appendix used by NCAA news coverage — is 25. We use 25.
NIL-NCAA.com is the successor site from the same compiler and mostly matches CSC on the sport-by-sport caps, including track at 45. Treat its “90% of new scholarships go to sports other than football and basketball” line as an editorial illustration of theoretical new capacity if every sport were fully funded, not as an NCAA statistic and not as what any one school will spend.
Title IX is a different constraint
NCAA roster rules do not override Title IX. Athletic financial aid at a school that awards it must be substantially proportionate to the gender breakdown of athletes. Participation opportunities are a separate three-prong test (proportionality, history of expansion, or full accommodation of the underrepresented sex). Adding 20 football seats who all receive aid moves both participation and aid — it does not create a dollar-for-dollar women’s matching rule written into the settlement.
Large women’s rosters (rowing, equestrian, acrobatics, stunt) remain the practical way many football schools keep participation counts in range. That is structural, not a recommendation to migrate a child into a sport she does not want. If an athletic department cannot afford to fund new women’s seats, cutting men’s Olympic sports is one historical response — a budget choice, not a House-settlement requirement.
Revenue sharing is a third pool. The settlement lets participating schools share athletic revenue with athletes under a per-school cap (about $20.5 million in 2025–26, with a 4% annual step in years two and three of each cycle). How a school splits that money is not prescribed — a ~90% football-and-men’s-basketball split is common practice at Power schools, not a settlement rule. Back-pay damages are $2.576 billion (often rounded in coverage to nearly $2.8 billion), allocated overwhelmingly to football and men’s basketball; Title IX appeals stayed distribution of that back-pay, not go-forward revenue sharing. Do not treat a 90/5/5 damages formula as a Title IX-safe template for current athlete pay.
Sources and how to use this
- NCAA DI Board of Directors — roster provisions (June 23, 2025)
- College Sports Commission — roster limits
- NCAA Division I House settlement Q&A (updated May 29, 2026)
Confirm the current roster and aid rules with the school. Conferences and institutions can run tighter than these caps. Division II, NAIA, NJCAA, and Division III are different regimes — this page is Division I participating schools only.
- Athletic scholarships by sport — EADA programs and aid-eligible seats, joined to these caps.
- Athletic-aid roster scarcity by sport — relative opportunity density vs high-school participation, not these caps.
- What House v. NCAA actually changed for athletic aid — the literacy essay behind this table.
- The Quiet Arbitrage in Women’s College Sports — why large women’s rosters exist.
- EADA sports directory — which schools actually field the sport.
Table compiled from the College Sports Commission roster-limit listing and NCAA Division I implementation of the House settlement, last checked 2026-09-01. Potential increase is arithmetic (new roster cap minus 2024–25 scholarship limit), not a forecast of awards. Verify with each school.