Why this football signing class has Mack Brown and NC coaches worried about 2022
Football’s early signing period that began Wednesday could be a very different experience for recruits a year from now due to the NCAA’s eligibility waiver applied this season.
The waiver gives current Division I players — it was approved for all fall and winter sports — an added year of eligibility and an added year to complete it. In plain terms, the waiver means football players will go into next season as if this season never happened. A player in his third year of eligibility this season will still be considered in his third year next season, even if they played the entire 2020 schedule.
Shelby High School football coach Mike Wilbanks has two of the highest-ranked players in North Carolina in the next two recruiting classes. His advice to junior Malaki Hamrick, who is fielding offers from the likes of Ohio State and Notre Dame, differs from what it was to senior Jack Hollifield, who waited late in the process and committed to Virginia Tech in September.
Wilbanks told The News & Observer that because of the uncertainty of the availability of scholarships in 2022, he’s advising Hamrick to commit early.
“We started looking at numbers, not specific to North Carolina, but across the FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) next year,” Wilbanks said. “It’s gonna be a weird situation.”
That’s been the refrain amongst college coaches and administrators, too. UNC head coach Mack Brown has been using the term “roster management” since August in trying to figure out how to adjust his recruiting to fit the numbers created by the waiver. The days of 100 football scholarships on a roster will return, albeit temporarily.
Most schools are proceeding as normal for the Class of 2021. UNC expects to receive a Letter of Intent from each of its 18 commitments. The Tar Heels could have a freshman class — including former redshirts in the class of 2019 and the entire class of 2020 — compose more than half of potentially 95 scholarship spots on their roster.
But next year, the scholarship offers and commitments for the Class of 2022 could be limited to single digits.
“There’s no question that people will have more than 85 (scholarships) next year,” Brown told reporters. “I mean, that’s a given, the question is because they gave all of the players on the team a year back, should we have some relief in the ‘22 class to try to keep your classes balanced?”
An NCAA spokesperson confirmed in an email to the N&O that the Division I Council has not made any recommendations at this time that would increase the scholarship limit for the 2022-23 school year so teams would have to get back down to 85 scholarships for that year.
That could create chaos. Coaches could run off players to free up scholarships. Players, especially freshmen bogged down from competition in a big class, could transfer in large numbers.
That’s why Brown is hopeful that the NCAA could approach decreasing scholarships the same way they did in the early 1990s so that the number wouldn’t abruptly go back to 85, but it would in waves going down to, say, 90 first then 85.
Brown at least has a better idea now than when the waiver first passed in August of how many scholarships he’ll have in the future. Receiver Beau Corrales, linebacker Tyrone Hopper and kicker Grayson Atkins are the only three seniors who decided to take advantage of the waiver and will return next season.
But Miami coach Manny Diaz called it ‘sad’ that the NCAA hasn’t clarified if schools would be able to go above the limit and intimated that the confusion could cause more transfers.
“You are seeing all around the country all these kids jumping into the portal and in reality, there’s nowhere for them to go,” Diaz said. “There’ll be more players in the portal than spots available unless we change the way we do our scholarship accounting.”
Another potential ripple has everything to do with accounting. Athletic department budgets around the nation have absorbed losses in revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some schools won’t be able to afford the additional scholarships.
At UNC, the standard full scholarship for an in-state undergraduate is $26,383.00. For an out-of-state student, that goes up to $54,083. (Those numbers could fluctuate based on factors such as living on or off campus and whether they have their own health insurance.) Start multiplying that to cover a football team and it’s easy to understand the anxiety athletic directors have.
ECU athletic director Jon Gilbert told the N&O that not all schools would be able to fund the additional scholarships for even one season of bloated rosters.
Gilbert pointed out schools are hurting from a lack of revenue in areas unrelated to athletics: Housing, dining, parking and bookstores. ECU has tried to address its shortfall by cutting men’s and women’s swimming and diving and men’s and women’s tennis. It also announced furloughs and temporary salary reductions for athletic department personnel including the head coaches in football and men’s basketball in October.
“Those revenues are all down from an institutional standpoint, and certainly there’s an impact on athletics where we’re not able to have the number of fans that we typically would have,” Gilbert said. “Our expenditures are up because of COVID so I think we are in unprecedented times. And I think this is going to be a big reset in all of intercollegiate athletics.”