While Notre Dame football and the rest of the college sports world continues to wait to see just how the House vs NCAA settlement shakes out, there is at least some possible light at the end of the tunnel. The two sides of the settlement have filed an amended agreement that is now waiting for Judge Claudia Wilken’s approval.
At issue is that Wilken required some kind of grandfather clause or phasing in of the roster cut downs to 105 players on football teams. The new agreement does that … sort of as it allows schools to not cut down and even invite cut players back, should they want to.
Notre Dame commits to keeping full football roster of players
While there is some doubt that the judge will trust that schools will follow down the path she laid out, Notre Dame has become the first school to official announce it will indeed allow every player still on the roster to stay and any player that left because of the roster cut down to come back.
Ross Dellenger reported on Thursday morning that Fighting Irish AD Pete Bevacqua told Yahoo! Sports his program would follow the letter of the new agreement. Considering that Bevacqua has long been a proponent of at least grandfathering the roster limits in, it makes sense.
Notre Dame is one of those schools that holds walk-ons in high regard. It is of course the school of Rudy Ruettiger, one of the of most famous walk-ons in the history of college football.
It’s worth pointing out that quite a few schools have already cut down to 105. That’s a big reason why there has been so much pushback to the grandfathering and phasing in of the limits. However, the Fighting Irish are sitting at 114.
They’d love to not have to cut anyone else. The Notre Dame football team would also love to ask some guys they had to jettison come back. And now we wait to see if a roster limit is even something anyone will have to honor when this all shakes out sometime next week.