The Dark Side of the Extra Year of Eligibility for College Athletes
Ever since Covid-19 hit in 2020, the college sports world has changed drastically. Not only were many college athletes’ seasons ruined and cut short due to the pandemic, the pandemic also changed the future of college sports. After the pandemic concluded, many college athletes and fans were so livid about the shortened season that it forced the National Collegiate Athletic Association to grant an extra year of eligibility to each and every college student affected by the pandemic. This rule change led to many of those college athletes using their extra year of eligibility and playing an additional year of college sports.
As many college seniors opted to use their extra year of eligibility and return to campus to play sports, colleges had to juggle a limited number of scholarships with even more players. Many high school students had already been recruited and offered scholarships to play for these colleges their freshman year. With many seniors opting to return with an extra year of eligibility, it caused many schools to have too many players on scholarship. This then forced schools to make tough decisions and take players off of scholarship. More often than not, the changes led to incoming freshmen losing their scholarship to older students.
The NCAA tried to please all parties involved. From the outside, it looked like the association made the overall right choice. However, years after the decision was made, its effects are still creating problems for college athletes and schools as well as the NCAA on the whole. Some of these issues include threatening financial aid and scholarships for student athletes, creating over-crowded rosters and graduate programs, and much more. While some players were afforded one more year of eligibility, overall, the addition of an extra year of eligibility has cost players, schools and the NCAA millions of dollars.
Of all the issues that arose from the extra year of eligibility, one of the biggest problems was that it jeopardized scholarships that had already been promised to student athletes. Scholarships can make or break a student athlete’s chance to attend a school and allow them to go to schools they would normally not be able to afford, just so that they can play sports. Each school is allowed to have a certain number of players under scholarship depending on the sport that they play. For example, football is allowed to offer eighty five scholarships, basketball thirteen, and baseball eleven point seven scholarships per team. Scholarships are extremely valuable to every school and student athletes trying to play at the college level compete to receive them. When the extra year of eligibility was granted to all players affected by the pandemic, these already small scholarship numbers got even smaller.
One of the freshmen who lost his scholarship in 2022 due to the new extra year of eligibility rule is my friend, Kevin Rosado. Kevin was a talented baseball player in high school and received multiple offers to attend Division One schools. In the beginning of his senior year of high school, he committed to playing baseball for Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. The Covid-19 pandemic started five months after he committed to the school. Kevin arrived at Fairleigh Dickinson in the fall. At the baseball team’s first practice of the season, the coach told the team that because of the pandemic, some seniors were going to return, which meant they now had too many players on scholarships. He informed the freshmen and other underclassmen that they would have to now compete for the scholarship and that only the best eleven players would get them. Those students who didn’t win scholarships would still have a spot on the team as walk-ons (players on the team who were not recruited and are not rewarded scholarships).
Kevin said the news shifted his entire college trajectory. “I felt very blindsided by the whole situation,” he said. “I had this school who has been calling and recruiting me since I was 16. And I finally got here, and now I’m nothing to them.”
Kevin added that he would not have gone to Fairleigh Dickinson if he wasn’t given a scholarship because he would not have been able to afford it. “I would have never enrolled here if it wasn’t for my scholarship. It’s not even that I didn’t want to compete for a spot on the team, I was ready for competition. I just had to leave when my tuition went from nothing to $30,000 a year out of nowhere.”
After being told he no longer had a guaranteed scholarship with the team, Kevin tried and failed to earn his scholarship back. He stayed on the team as a walk-on for the rest of the fall semester but later transferred to Raritan Valley Community College. There, he played division three baseball on a more affordable tuition. He is now enrolled at Rutgers University in New Brunswick and plays club baseball.
After listening to a player’s experience with the extra year of eligibility rule, it is also important to look at it from another perspective, the fans perspective. The NCAA is aware that fans are a huge source of income, so their reactions to the rule change could have important effects. Jonathan Vasquez, a college sports fan who also announces and broadcasts Rutgers men’s and women’s soccer and basketball games had this to say about the rule change: “It does have mostly negative ramifications for students, but overall it has a positive impact on competition in college sports.”
“Ultimately I think it is a lose-lose situation with one bright spot to it,” Vasquez said. “I think that no matter what, one party — whether you are a senior who does not get an extra year of eligibility granted to them, or a freshman who now loses a scholarship because of this — someone has to lose.”
Vasquez said the NCAA could have softened the blow by limiting the pool of players who could take advantage of the extra year. “I do think one rule tweak the NCAA could have added was not allowing extra eligibility for players who had previously redshirted or used injury to get more eligibility. This causes more than just fifth year seniors, now there are even seniors who are sixth, even seventh year of eligibility. There are 25 year olds taking away scholarships from freshmen at that point. Like I said before, the only bright spot is, college sports are now more competitive than ever. It is a huge bright spot though.”
While players and fans directly experience the effects of the eligibility change, school administrators also see its effects on players losing or winning scholarships. Rutgers University Director of Admissions Dave Pasquarella said the change did not have much of an impact on college admissions overall. “There is not much change when it comes to the admissions side and extra years of eligibility,” he said.“Most of the extra years of eligibility students end up starting grad school which does not take away any opportunities typically from high school students trying to attend a college with a limited number of spots.” Players bear most of the brunt of the rule change and its impacts on scholarships, financial aid and roster sizing. By increasing the scarcity of scholarship money, the change has primarily affected students and schools negatively by forcing both to spend more money on things like tuition, travel, and food.
In conclusion, the extra year of eligibility has created a tough situation for both players and schools, both financially and logistically. Some students have lost scholarships and money because of the new rule, while schools have lost money funding their sports teams. The change has also caused immense stress for families all across the country hoping for financial support to send their children to college through gaining scholarships. With an increased player pool due to the new extra year of eligibility rule, it has increased the amount of competition with fifth year seniors taking away countless opportunities from aspiring freshmen who are trying to accomplish their dreams of playing college sports. As more and more students lose their scholarships, it leads to more money coming out of families’ pockets who can’t afford it. This one decision made by the NCAA to add an extra year of eligibility was just the first domino in line that would fall and go onto impact tens of thousands of lives around the world.
