Are USC, Clemson maxing out scholarships under new rules? Here’s what we know
In the wake of the House settlement that finally allows colleges to share revenue and pay their student-athletes, you will hear a lot about money.
You will hear that, come July 1, colleges that opt in to revenue sharing will have a cap of $20.5 million to spend all across its athletic department’s teams. You will hear how any NIL deals outside of that will be subject to third-party approval, a change that’s expected to bring about controversy and lawsuits. And you will likely hear how most of the money is expected to go to football and men’s basketball players.
That will lead to athletic directors being asked what their school is doing for everyone else — for every athlete who competes in a non-revenue sport and might not get a check via revenue-sharing.
This is when ADs can tout one of the House settlement’s other major impacts: Colleges can now hand out scholarships to every student-athlete on every team.
Before the House settlement, NCAA rules mandated scholarship limits for every sport — 85 for football, 11.7 for baseball, 15 for women’s basketball, and so on — but that came without roster limits. And some teams had rosters filled with dozens of walk-ons.
The House settlement sort of flips that model.
Now, sports will have roster limits — 105 for football, 15 each for men’s and women’s basketball, 34 for baseball — but there will be no scholarship limits. As long as it stays within the roster limits, a school can give scholarships to every student-athlete.
And many colleges are planning to get close to that, including Clemson, which announced in November that it was adding 150 new scholarships in 2025, boosting its overall count from 275 to 450.
“Effectively fully funding all of our rosters is a significant competitive opportunity,” Clemson athletic director Graham Neff said in April. “And it really just speaks to the connectivity, the ethos of Clemson.”
Others have announced similar measures. Texas, for example, said it was adding 200 scholarships to fully fund every single sport. Still, there’s a drawback. Longhorns AD Chris Del Conte said, to help pay for the additional scholarships, Texas is going to raise season-ticket prices.
Adding scholarships is not without its consequences, which is perhaps why South Carolina will not quite be matching Clemson’s scholarship push right away. USC athletic director Jeremiah Donati told The State in late May that the Gamecocks will add “over 50 scholarships next year.”
“We felt like that was a good, really good start,” Donati said. “It’ll provide a lot of our sports to be very competitive and realize that there’s probably more to come there.”
And as South Carolina prepares to add $20.5 million to its budget, it also has to account for a massive increase in coaching salaries. Football coach Shane Beamer will make almost $1.5 million more than he did last year. His assistants collectively will cost almost $2 million more in 2025. Women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley’s contract extension boosted her salary by $800,000 and her assistants will surely see raises.
The budget it growing. Also growing is that salary cap of $20.5 million, which will increase over time.
“You have to ask yourself how much will the cap go up the following year? And how do we want to allocate these resources?” Donati said. “And so we’ve got to just be mindful of those resources and add more (scholarships) thoughtfully.”
The State’s Chapel Fowler contributed reporting.
This story was originally published June 10, 2025 at 7:00 AM.
