Scholarship Limits
If you include the recent signees, Miami currently has 75 players on scholarship. With the NCAA limit of scholarships at the FBS level being 85, this would seem to imply that Miami can sign 10 additional players to scholarships. I’ll detail the breakdown of the 75 players in more detail as I walk through the roster below.
There is an additional restriction outside of the 85-scholarship limit at any one time and that’s the fact that a team can only sign 25 new counting scholarships per year. This is what really hurts Miami this cycle and here’s why: last season Miami signed 17 recruits, but because of the transfer additions, ended up at 25 counters. Asa Martin, Bubba Bolden, Tate Martell, Trevon Hill, Chigozie Nnoruka, Jaelen Phillips, Ousman Traore, KJ Osborn all counted against last year’s counter limit.
Additionally, Miami had only three of the freshmen last year enroll early (Jeremiah Payton, Jahfari Harvey, Zion Nelson). Freshmen who enroll early are allowed to be counted towards the previous years’ 25-counter maximum (provided there is room). The 2018 class added 23 recruits, but Venzell Boulware came in as a grad transfer and brought the class to 24, giving Miami one counter towards that class and with the dominoes moving Miami to have the ability to sign 26 players in this class.
The 2017 class signed 24 recruits, then added George Brown as a graduate transfer, bringing that years’ class up to the maximum 25-counter limit. Because of sanctions that ended in 2016, Miami could only sign up to 22 players in that class. They signed 17 freshmen, took Gerald Willis as a transfer, then added graduate transfer Adrian Colbert, meaning they could roll three scholarships into the 2015 class. The sanction years class took their full allotment of 22 players and maximized the roll-back option to its fullest so trickle trail ends here.
This brings us back to the fact the maximum Miami can sign in this class is 26 new counter scholarship players. Miami has applied for an additional waiver to allow for one additional player due to Asa Martin leaving in the same semester he enrolled, but I am operating under the assumption that waiver will not be granted and Miami will be limited to 26 new counters for this cycle.
Whenever you see the potential of taking a marginal addition to the roster it’s important to remember the impact that addition can end up having down the road. If they had it to do over again, I wonder if Miami would sign Asa Martin, George Brown, and Ousman Traore again? For me, I wouldn’t be taking any non-graduate transfers unless they are expected to be major impact players due to the impact it has on the roster composition.
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