CFB rules: How many players can be on a college football team?

What are the CFB rules regarding rosters? Exactly how many players can be on a college football team? Well, the answer might surprise you!

Unlike the NFL's 53-player roster limit, the NCAA doesn't impose a hard cap on how many players can be on a college football team. Nonetheless, there are some other factors that influence the composition of a college football team.

How many Scholarship Players can be on a College Football team?

The limit to how many players can be on a college football team is the number of scholarships they can give out to high school recruits. Universities might have upwards of 100 players on their rosters at any point of the year, but they are limited by division on how many scholarships they can offer.

The NCAA's Division I FBS allows a maximum of 85 scholarship players, meanwhile, the Division I-AA has a cap of 64, and Division II only has 36 scholarship players per school.

Alongside this, each particular conference might have its own caps in different circumstances. For example, the Big 10 only allows 70 players to go on the road with the team. Schools have an average of 118 players, and they are allowed to recruit 25 new players per season. The combination of 85 scholarships and 25 new recruits per season is known as the 25/65 rule.

Even though the number might seem on the higher side, making it to a college football program is no mean feat!