Couple quick questions

[jshipman2]

How many players are allowed on a college roster and is the only way to recruit a player to offer a scholarship or will they committ without a scholarship offer?

[dawgfan]

Are you talking actual college football or TCY?

For Div 1-A schools, teams are allowed to carry no more than 85 scholarship players each season, and can give out no more than 25 scholarships each season. I don't believe there are any rules on the number of walk-ons allowed on a team.

In TCY, the roster limit is supposedly 60 scholarships, but there is a bug with the redshirt rule that allows you to carry up to 76 players if you redshirt all your incoming freshmen. Walk-ons will add to your roster size (there is no limit on the number of walk-ons).

Each season you can recruit up to 16 players. Depending on how your roster breaks down, you won't always have 16 scholarships to give, but you can recruit walk-ons so you should always bring in 16 players total.

What you want to do in these scenarios where you have less than 16 scholarships to give is near the end of the recruiting process, in week 12 or so, start looking at the top academic players at positions where you could stand to have some extra depth and target guys rated in the 40-50 range and request a visit, but don't offer them a scholarship. If you offer a player a scholarship and then your allotment of scholarships is filled, any prospect you'd offered a scholarship to will be considered to have had their scholarship offer from you revoked and will no longer consider your school. If these guys don't get scholarship offers elsewhere, they will likely accept your visit request and commit to you without taking a scholarship. You may as well go after the better students - no point in having a walk-on that drags down your academic rep.