Quote: “The NCAA manual is available online. The NCAA restrictions for FCS football are 63 scholarships and 85 “counters”. So you can only have 85 guys receiving ANY form of aid. You can still only have 63 football scholarships. But in theory you could have 63 full scholarships and 22 need based financial aid players on the roster. Anyone on a football scholarship (even partial) is a counter. I believe an athlete on non-athletic fin aid is not a counter until the athlete plays. I know an athlete who does not receive any fin aid is never a counter regardless of whether or not he plays.
Just for sake of example, lets say Delaware has 63 full scholarship players and 22 need based players who all receive 1/2 tuition in fin aid which is perfectly legal by NCAA rules. Under PL rules, they would have 74 scholarship equivalencies well above the 60 allowed.
Just another disadvantage PL programs face.”
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I think your math is a bit misleading. In most cases, the NCAA equivalency count would be the same 74 as the PL. Any recruited football player who receives need-based aid is a counter and the amount of money he receives (including need-based grants or loans) is counted towards the limit of 63 equivalencies – per NCAA rules. The bylaws have a very precise definition on what makes someone a “recruit”.
The one possible loophole a school like Delaware might occasionally have is that need-based aid not in any way based on athletics might not count the first year if a player is redshirted. But for it not to count, the aid would have to be identical to what a non-athlete receives, meaning no loans converted to grants beyond the normal policy for non-athletes. In any event, most of their need-based aid would count towards the limit of 63 equivalencies. Note that it is different in sports other than football and basketball.
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This reply was modified 10 years, 7 months ago by
Bison137.
