ABCA 2025: Division I coaches debate fall roster limits
STORIES Joe Healy - January 2, 2025
ABCA 2025: Division I coaches debate fall roster limits • D1Baseball
To kick off ABCA 2025, Division I coaches debated fall roster limits ahead of the coming spring roster limit of 34.
OXON HILL, Md. — As is customary on the first night of the American Baseball Coaches Association annual convention, Division I coaches met Thursday for a discussion led by ABCA Executive Director Craig Keilitz about current legislation affecting Division I baseball and the overall direction of the sport.
Though there were a handful of agenda items covered, by far the one that sparked the most interest was the debate about the potential of fall roster limits and where that number should be set.
Keilitz began the discussion by acknowledging the reality of the situation that, moving forward, Division I baseball rosters will be limited to 34 players, full stop, to be named by December 1. Any other adjustments to roster rules would have to work within that framework.
With that, Keilitz opened up the floor for debate among the assembled coaches, and after the better part of two hours of back and forth, the room landed on an agreement to move forward with a proposal of 38 players on the roster entering fall practice.
From here, Keilitz will take this proposal to the commissioners of the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC, a group that has the autonomy to approve this legislation on its own, for consideration and eventual approval.
Though Keilitz noted that he couldn’t guarantee that those conference commissioners would rubber stamp this proposal on the guidance of the ABCA membership alone, he said he was confident that they would take the voice of the membership into serious consideration on this matter.
But just as interesting as the conclusion the coaches came to was the debate that led up to that conclusion.
One option that was taken off the table immediately was unlimited fall rosters. Given the chance to make the case for unlimited fall rosters, no coach stepped forward. That doesn’t necessarily mean that no one supports that concept, of course, but those who might support it likely felt that there wasn’t going to be enough support for that to get it pushed through.
The discussion really warmed up when 38 was thrown out as the opening suggestion for the fall roster limit, with several coaches present noting that 38 was a happy medium number that served the dual purposes of giving coaches some wiggle room on the roster to allow for injuries during the fall while also being a reasonable number that they could plausibly make the case for in front of their respective athletic directors.
While no coach said that he thought 38 was an unreasonable number, there was a common animating issue among those who were at least receptive to a hard cap of 34 beginning in the fall—the return of the mid-year transfer.
The fear of the worst-case scenario goes something like this: with a fall roster of 38, when four players are told prior to December 1 that they aren’t going to make the final 34, a player from among those who were cut will take a cue from so many other college athletes of late and sue, in this case for the right to transfer somewhere at the semester break and play immediately. And given the success rate of college athletes suing the establishment, there’s an understandable fear that that would put college coaches on the fast track to having to manage another transfer window in December and January.
In fairness to those coaches, that’s a reality that college baseball has lived in the past, so it’s not just a theoretical boogeyman. This is something some coaches in the game now have lived and don’t want to live again.
Even the slightly less dramatic case isn’t ideal. Upset players who were cut (or players’ parents and advisors) could contact university administrators to express their disappointment and/or sabre rattle about bringing about a lawsuit, forcing athletic administrators to move to set a hard cap of 34 players in the fall to alleviate the situation moving forward. And in that scenario, the concern is perhaps less about the fall roster number itself and more that college baseball will have lost some momentum in scoring legislative wins, therefore preventing the sport from scoring other wins in the future.
There were also measured arguments from proponents of a hard cap of 34 that baseball should start there and then adjust to 38 or some other appropriate number in the future once there is more hard evidence to justify a number in the fall other than 34.
Ultimately, though, there was enough support in the room for a roster limit of 38 in the fall to move forward with the recommendation. There are always knock-on effects with any roster rule change, so this also likely won’t be the last debate about fall roster limits.
Prior to that spirited discussion, Keilitz ran through a couple of other bits of business.
For one, after finding that 84% of coaches surveyed by ABCA supported it, a move is underway to allow teams to play four fall games against outside competition rather than just the two that are allowed now. Originally there was a push for eight games (the number allowed in softball), but that was ultimately peeled back to a proposal for four.
Additionally, there is a push to standardize the spring practice start date to 35 days before the first allowable date for competition, or put another way, 35 days before opening day for a vast majority of Division I. This is designed to give players a longer period of ramping up between the start of spring practice and opening day.
Both of the above proposals are set to be voted on January 15, with implementation to come August 1, 2025 in the event they are approved.
