vatusay wrote:Did not know they were limited to that many scholarships
Thank you for the info!
Yup, and for reference, here's some more numbers to look over...
Scholarship limits for Div. I FBS is 85 (head count...means it has to be 85 actual full-scholarship players), for FCS it's 63 (but they can be split however they want), DII is 36, and DIII has no scholarships.
Based on the numbers I had for last year, we had 102 players on our full roster...so that's an average of ~62% of a full scholarship per player. That's not how it actually works in practice...you'll have something closer to maybe 53 players on full scholarship, 20 on half scholarship, and the rest as "walk-ons" (no scholarship). That's likely an oversimplification, but that gives you an idea of what the coaches have to work with. They have to come up with the math that fits their team, school, players, etc....but it's gotta total fewer than 63 scholarships.
Most likely, the 13 seniors who graduated were full-scholarship players. The players who left were mostly freshmen who didn't think they'd get playing time or didn't think they'd end up getting a scholarship in the near future. In many cases, they decide to go to DII school, where the competition for playing time and a scholarship is somewhat less (despite the fewer scholarship numbers). It's hard to say exactly how many scholarships we had available, but from the numbers I have, my best guess as to how many scholarships that accounted for, we're already pretty close to our scholarship limit...but obviously the coaching staff will have a MUCH better handle on that situation than I do.
Another interesting thing to think about....when FCS teams play FBS schools, quite often you will see the game start off close. The FCS team will still be within maybe a TD at halftime...but then the FBS school starts to blow things open in the second half. Scholarship differential is a large part of that difference. FBS has 85 D1 full-scholarship-quality players, FCS might have 35 or 45 or whatever (and then another 20-30 on partial scholarship). If you look at the starters for teams in the MVFC and starters for teams in the MAC, there's not a huge difference...we're going to match up pretty well with them. However, once things get into the second half and you start having to dig into the second string/backups due to starters getting tired or injured, you can quickly start getting to the point where you're playing non-full-scholarship players against more D1 full-scholarship players. Generally (not always, you're going to have exceptions) if a player is of a certain level, they will earn a full scholarship. If they're not quite at that level, then they'll have partial scholarship (or none) so that they can prove themselves and maybe earn a full scholarship.
So, you start off the game with roughly equal players (maybe the FBS has a slight advantage, but the FCS can stay close or even lead if they play well or have a lucky break or two), but later in the game, FBS has second-string players that are still roughly as good as the FCS team's starters. At that point the FCS team is putting in their second-string players, where there's a bigger drop-off usually, and that's where the FBS team usually pulls away.