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NCAA 5-for-5 Eligibility Rule Explained — What It Means for College Baseball Rosters & Recruiting | EMD Shorts · Dugout Dish Baseball Recruiting Podcast powered by EMD Baseball

• 0:02
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• 1:10
  Speaker B: welcome to this week's edition of in the Clubhouse for the IND Baseball. I'm Andy Kirakidis joined by my Wonderful co host Mr. Keith Glasser. How are we doing sir?
• 1:18
  Speaker C: Great. How are you?
• 1:20
  Speaker B: Good. We are going to take a couple minutes There has been quite a bit of discussion in the old Twitterverse X verse online in general around the what is seemingly the impending rule change. It has not gone into effect much to disagree with some people that have already put it out there that it's already happened. I think what we have read and it seems fairly clear that we're on the path to this happening, but nothing will be official until the Division 1 Cabinet meets on May 22, which is when they would potentially vote for some of the rule changes that are going to go into place. The five years to play, five seasons being the biggest change that would impact eligibility outside of the one time transfer rule, which I think is pretty straightforward. But without, without question this is a massive change. The eligibility rules have been you've got five years to play for and there's hardship waivers and redshirt years and some different, I don't want to call them, they're not loopholes but, but different contingencies for kids and mechanisms for kids to get extra years of eligibility that they've been able to go through an appeals process. All that kind of good stuff. This is the idea behind this I think in general and please disagree with me if you think I'm wrong here but it's really just to kind of streamline it that you get five years from the day you sat on campus. Your clock starts when you step on campus or at the age of 19. So essentially you're capping eligibility at the age of 24. Would you say that's a fair, clean assessment of kind of how the age eligibility portion of this would kick in?
• 3:09
  Speaker C: Yeah, I think that it's the easiest one. I mean it more or less sounds like we're going to 16U, 17U, 18U type model.
• 3:22
  Speaker B: Right.
• 3:22
  Speaker C: Like it's going to be 23U and anyone can play up to that age. But I think that the, you know, we were talking before we started this. I think the. What makes the most sense to me before them voting on this and this becoming a rule and how they hammer this all out the most. What makes the most sense to me is your, the age you are when you enroll in a college, whether it's a junior college, Division three, Division two, and be very clear, this is division one only, this is not division two or three. But they're essentially going to say you enrolled at a college, you were this age, your clock started, then you have five years from when that clock started to complete your eligibility. So if you PG and you end up being 19 when you start, then that's what your clock started at 19. You have five years from that point in time because you went and did an extra year and postgradted somewhere. That's what, reading all the articles I've read, that's what makes the most sense to me. I'm not on the committee.
• 4:26
  Speaker B: No. And I think there's a lot of details that need to be ironed out. But that seems like the most logical way for them to handle this is that your clock starts when you get to campus, junior college or not. Because I do think a part of this is to kind of call the conversation around juco years not starting and all that kind of good stuff. But you know, five years to play five instead of five to play four. Like it's a, it's a big change. And I'm very curious what other concessions they're going to make to try to make this a little bit easier on coaches and maybe lessen the impact a little bit on rosters in general. Because essentially what would happen is if this goes into play for this fall is that you have a five year attrition cycle jammed into a four year attrition cycle roster, which can become troublesome when you're talking about only having 34 roster spots. Now you've got five years to carry guys, what is that going to look like? That's a big question that I have. And honestly It's a question that coaches are trying to answer in preparation for this is, well, you know, how are we going to manage a 34 man roster when all of a sudden our freshman class now has an additional year of eligibility, our junior class has an additional year of eligibility and what is that going to ultimately look like? You know, I think that's, that's an interesting piece of this puzzle for sure. I think there's some, there's some takes out there that I'm not sure I necessarily agree with. I think some people think that this is going to be beneficial for high school kids and I think maybe long term it could be, but the short term ramifications of this I think is you have, you're probably going to have another portal log jam like we saw with with COVID would be my guess.
• 6:14
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• 7:17
  Speaker C: yeah,
• 7:17
  Speaker B: what are your thoughts on that?
• 7:20
  Speaker D: I don't know that we do,
• 7:23
  Speaker C: you know, I don't know how many. I mean I certainly think it's a possibility, but I don't know how. I mean I'd be interested to see, I mean last year the numbers from Division 2 and 3 trying to jump up weren't as successful as you would think. I could, I could see a bunch of people trying to get in there to try to get an extra year of eligibility. But like if we're going to stay at 34 roster spots are going to be, you're going to have to be a dude in order to go up and try to get an extra year of eligibility. And then, I mean, there's more questions that you can extrapolate out of there of, you know, is it worth it? I like, you know, if you're Good enough. You might be playing professionally anyways. I don't know the answers to those questions, but I mean I, I certainly could see it. But you know, I think if you're going to stay at 34 and then you're going to have a five, a five year cycle on and giving extra guys, you know, another year of eligibility, things like that, like your coaches are really going to have to weigh the fact of, okay, like this is a guy that I'm going to have to stick with or you know, you're going to run the risk of just getting cut because you're not good enough in the fall, you know, so, and then end up not playing. Right. Like, yeah, that was great. You went up and got cut in the fall and now you have nowhere to go. You're just going to go back down somewhere and play your fourth year and the dream's over. So I, I, I don't know. I, I, I certainly think that there's the potential of having it, but I think you're going to have to think really long and hard about whether, or not, and have good advice if, if you think you're, you're going to be able to do that. I, yeah, I, I, I guess I'm, I wasn't expecting this question, so I'm thinking through it as I'm talking. I certainly could see there being a logjam, but you know, more, there was, there was no, there was no clock during COVID you know what I mean? Like, we were just handing out extra years willy nilly to everyone.
• 9:20
  Speaker B: But if everybody on the rosters right now, outside of the seniors, which is an important caveat to this, right? Like all the kids who are graduating this year, they are not getting grandfathered in this by, no, that's at least what's been stated so far is they are not getting, and I, I, I
• 9:34
  Speaker C: also wonder if that's because they're not anticipating this going into effect right away.
• 9:40
  Speaker B: I would imagine they probably do it with the kind of, with the cycle which is typically August. Right?
• 9:47
  Speaker C: Yeah, like I, I, I have to imagine that they don't, there's too many, there's too many things that need to be figured out in such a short period of time for them to be able to actually implement this right away. Like, I wouldn't be shocked if this gets passed and then it's like this year's junior class is also going to be told like a tough luck and
• 10:08
  Speaker B: yeah, I'll be curious to see if that happens because I, I think they probably have to make a decision on who gets grandfathered into it. But just say that only ones that are not subject to this are the seniors and they're just the kids who graduate. The kids who graduate. My hypothesis on the potential log jam is that you've got all these kids who are juniors right now, and if you're. That you're a senior next year and you're not a draftable player but you're really good, you may go into the portal with the idea that I have an extra year and I can go play it somewhere else. So that's where I think the potential log jam could be, is that some schools may not have room on their roster and it'll force some guys into the portal organically because you're trying to do this five year attrition into a four, into a four year roster. So that's my worry, is that we're going to run into another, another log jam and it's going to continue to trickle over until all of these kids cycle out and we get a little bit of a, kind of a normal.
• 11:14
  Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I, I think, I think eventually you're going to have to go to all three divisions, being five.
• 11:22
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because that's another. That's another really?
• 11:24
  Speaker C: Because if you, if you're transferring out of a Division one and landed at two or three now you lose. Yeah, back to four.
• 11:32
  Speaker B: That's a good one. And then you think, do you get in. If you started at Division 2 and you played at Division 2 for two years and you go into the portal and you go up to a Division 1 school, do you get an extra year? That's a question. I'm. I'm assuming that these people who are sitting down to doing this are considering these type of cases because. And it may be more relevant for baseball than it is other sports because of Division 1, 2 and 3 is a little bit closer than it is for other sports in terms of the, the level of play. I got to imagine they're going to plug some holes on some of these potential loopholes, but that's an interesting one. So there's a lot to unpack here. And is it going to affect high school kids? Yeah, absolutely. I think it, it'll affect them less if the roster turnover, if the rosters get expanded, because I think it provides more room. But coaches are definitely going to have some decisions to make. And I guess the only kind of silver lining here is that if the seniors who are on campus right now ultimately do not get grandfathered into this, the coaches have A full year going into next year from a baseball perspective where you can kind of normalize your roster a little bit and you have an understanding of, hey, this is how many guys we're going to have coming in as freshmen. These are the amount of guys that are going to get an extra fifth year. And you can, you can start to play your game with what your roster is ultimately going to look like, but somewhere along the line, guys are going to have to be in the portal for some reason or another. And maybe we never get away from the portal log jam, but that's my biggest worry. I don't even know if it's to worry, but that's my biggest thing that pops into my head is that are we, are we going to see some of that Covid stuff kind of rear its head again? Which, you know, it's not that it was good or bad. I think everybody who had to go through that probably deserved another year. But it's, it's an interesting thing to take a look at. Yeah.
• 13:43
  Speaker C: I think that there's, and everyone's reacting is this, this is a done deal. Which look, it might be when they vote on it, but there's way too many unknowns to kind of figure out what's going to happen. I hate to be ambiguous like that on the podcast, but if we're staying at 34 and there's other sports, the same thing. Right. Like you're going to have 34 guys in a, in a five year cycle because you're, there's going to be no more red shirts, there's going to be no more hardship waivers. Like you got five years. There's only going to be exceptions for. I think what I read was pregnancy, military service or religious retreats.
• 14:28
  Speaker B: Is that the right word, exemptions? Yeah. I think probably more targeted towards the Mormon population to be where they go on missions and.
• 14:35
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 14:36
  Speaker B: Is it a little bit of a different circumstance?
• 14:38
  Speaker C: Yes. So like it's, those are, those are going to be the only exceptions. You blow your acl, you blow your ucl. Like you don't get a red shirt. You're. You got five years and that's it, you know, so it's. But if we're going to keep two and three at four, five years, play four. Like do you view exhaust your eligibility there? Can you go up and play a fifth or is that a no? You know, and then if you're going to go to five for everyone, that's putting division two and three in a spot where, you know, it's going to Be a weird, a weird model because there's, there are a lot of schools out there that don't have grad school. So then like, that's where I think you're, you could end up having a portal log jam maybe a little bit more like, because you're going to have people that are going to be in the portal trying to go, but then you're going to have a lot of people who graduate in four, don't have a grad school opportunity at the school that they're at, and go, well, I'm, I have a fifth year, I'm gonna go play and get in the portal. And all of a sudden we have a lot of people in the portal because, well, my school doesn't have grad school or they do, but they don't have the grad school that I want. So I'm out of here. You know, there, there's not, you know, it's not like they're, they're falling off of trees out there. You know, like, where I coach at RPI, there's a robust master's and PhD program for, you know, pretty much everything that, that they offer. So you could get, you could stay in a five year cycle and you don't have a roster limit. You, you could take some guys to, you know, develop along the way and get them going in five years. You know, I think that it, you know, the more I think about it, like, it might work better at a Division 2 and 3 where you have schools that may be struggling from a school, a financial standpoint, where you can get more people on a roster, develop guys and, you know, have more, make more money. And I, I hate to say it that way, but that's a reality of how like schools are going to look at this. If that was to happen, like, oh, we can get another eight athletes on baseball and you keep doing it and all of a sudden there's 100 more people there. That's more money than the school's making. And you got five years. So, hey, you know, but it's, I, I, I just think that there's, if you're gonna keep the rosters at 34, like, I'm not gonna be shocked if in three months they're like, hey, by the way, we're gonna go ahead and expand rosters back to 40 because it, to your point, if it gets to be like this, like Covid, like, we gotta expand the rosters because we're in a five year cycle, everything that we're doing is built under a four year Cycle, not a five. So we have to do something to accommodate, not asking for an entire new class, but maybe we get to 40 and that gives us the ability to be able to have the 40, you know, to have a five year cycle with this number of players and you know, across the board in all the sports, you know, but it's going to get super tight in a, in a five year window for, you know, for that small of a roster.
• 17:40
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• 17:42
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• 18:22
  Speaker B: When I think that, when I think about the roster size too, because I've heard some people talk about how this could be really beneficial for high school kids from a development perspective and well, on the surface I, that sounds good, but the reality of the situation with the rosters at 34 from a baseball perspective is you don't. There's not enough roster room to take developmental guys. Right. And I've had this conversation with dozens of coaches that that's one of the biggest things that they've adjusted with their recruiting, is that they don't have the ability to take as many kids that they don't think have a legitimate chance to play by the time they're a sophomore because you don't have enough roster flexibility to really let a kid go through his natural progression. And I was just talking to a coach about this on Sunday. So that's one of the. Ben, the biggest adjustments is that we have to recruit guys that can fight for a position as a freshman, not guys that we think are a year or two away from being able to contribute. And until those rosters go up, I think you're still in the same situation regardless of whether guys get an extra year because geez, just knocked over my cup.
• 19:39
  Speaker C: Yikes.
• 19:39
  Speaker B: But you know, when you get into this situation where these high school kids are going into 34, like, I don't think people can take projectable guys on just because they have a fifth year because you don't have the roster room to do it.
• 19:55
  Speaker C: Yeah, I agree that's why I think the rosters need to expand, especially at the highest levels.
• 20:05
  Speaker B: And I agree with that. It's hard, I'd like them to see
• 20:09
  Speaker C: go to 40 because it's, you're, you have the time because you want to have the time to get the kids better because you think that they're going to be able to help you, excuse me, in the future. But you also run the risk of saying like, I don't have time to develop that guy right now because I need 34 players that are going to help me immediately. And if you don't have those, like, if you don't have that extra wiggle room to be like, oh, it's a five year window, like we can take a flyer on five or four or five guys that we can get better over the course of the season in practice and development and inner squads and working with them individually. It's really hard to look at that guy and that's, and be like, now we should take that guy and have him take up one of our 34 man roster spots even though we know he has no real shot of playing until he's a sophomore.
• 21:03
  Speaker B: And
• 21:05
  Speaker C: you know, I, again, you're kind of back into the, I guess I'm talking myself into the COVID issue that you brought up.
• 21:14
  Speaker B: But you kind of, you can back
• 21:16
  Speaker C: yourself into that corner of, you know, after that first year, if they're not good enough, if you don't think they're going to be good enough moving forward, then what do you do? Right? Like you got one free transfer and you got four years left. So go find the right spot. Because I don't think it's going to be here, you know, but I, I, I just think that there's, again, there's, there's way too many unknowns to be able to sit here. Like, we can pontificate about this all night long, but like the ultimate thing is if they, if this gets passed, then what? I don't, I don't think you can just go at the Division 1 level. You're gonna have five years to play five. It's age based. Everything else stays the same. Like Division 2 and 3 are like, what are we doing transfer wise? What are we doing with roster limits? What are we doing here? And you know, it's going to get incredibly difficult, I think on the coach's end. And in part we're at this part because we've, it's come off the rails with all the people suing the NCAA for extra years and the nil Stuff like it's come off the rails, so they're trying to do something to get it back on the rails.
• 22:24
  Speaker B: And.
• 22:25
  Speaker C: But there, there's gonna have to be some give and take. Like, you can say it's five for five, but like, there has to be some other set. Like, there has to be some other give and take with this. It can't just be, this is what we're doing. Go do it and figure it out on your own. Like, sorry. Like, we're the, like, hey, we're going to go to 30. It's going to be five for five, but we're going to increase roster sizes by 25% across all sports. You know what I mean?
• 22:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. Interesting.
• 22:56
  Speaker C: It's just, you know, which I think in baseball is what is probably six guys, right? So you put you up to 40. Ish.
• 23:02
  Speaker B: Yeah, the, the details of this will be interesting because, and I, like I said at the beginning of this, I think that give you eight. The folks who, the folks who are doing this, I'm assuming they have thought about this. And the difficult part that they have to try to sort out is like, you're not going to make everybody happy. Like, everybody's already in a, in a tiff because the kids who are seniors right now aren't going to get that fifth year. And. But at some point somebody has to lose. Like, not everybody can win, not everybody can get a fifth year. And yeah, I know it's difficult, but, you know, these are difficult decisions that have to be made. And at the end of the day, like, somebody is going to. Not everybody can benefit from the rule change.
• 23:43
  Speaker C: So, yeah, life's not fair. Like, so what? Life isn't fair. Here's your. If this is the first time in your life as a senior in college that you're learning that life isn't fair, then you have lived an incredibly blessed life to this point in your being. But this is the reality. Like, life isn't fair. So, hey, move on. Sorry, my last game got canceled because of rain. I didn't play my last college game. Didn't know. I ain't mad about it. But, like, life isn't fair. You move on.
• 24:19
  Speaker B: But there's, there's a lot we'll know if this goes into play on the 22nd.
• 24:23
  Speaker C: Here's the other thing, just to throw this out in the universe. Like, if you're a full sport athlete, you've likely packed it in in the spring. Like, now you're going to be like, well, I want to play again. Like, you, you were done. Now all of a sudden they make the rule change. You're like, well, I want to play like you have probably you haven't been at spring workouts because you can't. You're done. Just going to jump right back in. Spare me.
• 24:52
  Speaker B: There's a, a lot to be unpacked and, and sorted out here in the next, you know, what month. But we should have some more, yeah, we should have some more under understanding of this on the 22nd when the, the council actually meets, which I think is kind of the target date for a decision here. And then we'll know when it goes into play, if it goes into play. And at that point, I'm assuming we'll have all of the necessary details ironed out which will really inform what the future looks like. And maybe our opinions of how this will unfold will change once we have all the details. So I'm sure we'll talk about it then. Anything else you want to add?
• 25:30
  Speaker C: No, sir.
• 25:31
  Speaker B: All right, thank you for listening, everybody. We'll talk to you next week. Thank you for listening this week. If you're watching on YouTube, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and smash that like button for us. Check us out on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and as well as Spotify. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram MD Baseball.
• 25:52
  Speaker E: If you want to find out what
• 25:53
  Speaker B: me and Keith do to help families and players navigate the recruiting process, go ahead and check us out on emdbaseball.com take a few minutes to check out our new online academy. I promise you'll get some good information out of that. Thanks again for listening. Check in with you next week. Just watch.