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!

About the author

Andres is an analyst who has reported on college basketball and college football at Sportskeeda since 2023. Currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in law from Universidad Metropolitana in Venezuela, and has minor in International Relations. Andres holds a college certificate in Sports Entities Management from Unisport Management School in Spain. He is also an alumnus of the FIFA/CIES International Programme in Sports Management by FIFA and Universidad Metropolitana, and has been accepted into the Harvard CORe online program for which he was awarded a grant.

Given his background in sports management, law and business, Andres loves any chance to jump into the industry side of things and explain what's happening behind the curtain. He takes care when it comes to separating the wheat from the chaff and ensures he refers only to appropriate and respected sources.

His favorite college team is the Arkansas Razorbacks. While Troy Aikman and Joe Montana are two of his most favorite QBs, he is also an admirer of Joe Burrow's style and is rooting for Riley Leonard to do well.

Andres is an avid reader, likes adventure sports, dabbles in rock climbing, and is also a scuba diver. He is also an enthusiastic gamer, especially when it comes to strategy PC titles and loves his fair share of Halo.

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Edited by Siddharth Sikdar