https://twitter.com/TP4PT/status/1847703077144711464
If I am being honest I am all for this. High Majors can no longer stack up on talent for the bench. In relation to Valpo, there are currently 17 rostered athletes.
This is another terrible change damaging to mid-major teams like Valparaiso. With the addition of two scholarship spots for every team, that means each major collegiate athletic conference—including the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and SEC—gets to add two players per team with scholarships, well more than 100 total just in those five conferences. Those individuals likely would have been top players at mid-major teams. The gap in talent between the haves and the have nots will grow even greater. This will further diminish fan interest and support for those mid-major teams.
@valpopal Where do the athletes who are no longer allowed on rosters going then? Certainly not to other high majors. The "spare change" will remain in the mid major category. This means that high majors will need to me more selective of which phone calls they make. These new scholarship positions were likely being courted by lucrative NIL deals anyway.
Lets look at some in state numbers
IU currently has 19 rostered basketball players
Purdue has 18
ND has 17
Looking across the board of High Major. These are about average roster sizes. This is hundreds of players who are now going to have to take their talents elsewhere. Most likely elsewhere is the mid major level.
This also opens the door for HS kids to get a spotlight again. Offering a HS athlete a scholarship to develop has fallen to the wayside in favor of portal combat. A lot more factors go into how to fill the roster.
Lets look at some in state numbers
IU currently has 19 rostered basketball players
Purdue has 18
ND has 17
Looking across the board of High Major. These are about average roster sizes. This is hundreds of players who are now going to have to take their talents elsewhere. Most likely elsewhere is the mid major level.
Where you are wrong is that out of these schools, with the current 13 scholarship limit, the schools have 6, 5, and 4 walk-ons respectively. The majority of these “hundreds of players” are unlikely to continue to have D1 offers - for most of them, if they were good enough to play at an MVC-level mid major on scholarship, they wouldn’t turn it down to play only in blowouts with no scholarships at a power school.
Cutting these power conference walk-ons down is not going to increase the talent pool for mid majors. Take Jace Rayl at Purdue for example. It’s not like Purdue beat out Valpo and Indiana State in his recruitment, Rayl had 0 D1 scholarship offers. This is the type of player that will be whittled out of power conference programs - they are not going to be scholarship athletes at other D1 schools.
Instead, the power conference teams are going to have two entirely additional scholarships to give out. If anything, they will be poaching more from MVC/high mid major schools. If Purdue can keep the quality of their current 13 scholarship players and then go after talent the level of Cooper Schwieger/Darius Hannah/other top mid major players, that’s just going to widen the gap as we lose out on that talent.
And there’s also the element of whether Valpo and other rather financially strapped athletic departments will even be able to afford this change. Schools will not be required to give out the full 15 scholarships, so I would not be surprised if Valpo continued 13 scholarships plus then 2 walk-ons. And if you think about it, that roster limit, when it comes into effect, will affect the current walk-ons at Valpo - we currently have 17 players on the roster, so without considering graduates or transfers in/out we would need to cut two walk-ons. (When you do consider graduation and transfers it’s still possible for the walk-ons to stick around, but as is, the likes of Nick Lombardi and Ramzi Salem don’t have a guaranteed next year on the team.) Anyway, it’s ugly, and I don’t think this is as positive a development as you think it is.
This makes recruiting even tougher for Valpo and the MVC. Development of players and culling the Power conferences of players that just want playing time will be a factor. Can we get even more players in transfer portal?
Just in the Big Ten alone, there will be 36 spots that might have gone to MVC or similar teams. Maybe those same players will transfer after a year or two to Valpo. I wonder what the NLI money for spots 14-15 compare to MVC. The NLI difference might keep players on the bench.
