Cuts to the Iowa football roster made for a challenging December

Preliminary approval was given in October for the $2.8 billion House-NCAA settlement.

One of the proposed portions of the settlement terms includes maximum roster sizes in all Division I NCAA-sponsored sports. In FBS football, the maximum roster number is 105 players.

The average college football roster size for the 2023 season was 121.4 players. That means some difficult conversations need to be had at the national level as coaches and programs work to trim their rosters to the maximum of 105 players before the start of the 2025-26 school year.

Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz discussed how the new roster restrictions led to a challenging December.

“Terrible. It was the hardest part of this month. It could have been so easily avoided if we had entered it via stairs. I’m sure it was a financial decision. Nobody asked me my opinion or gave me advice informed the details. I’m sure it was a financial decision, like everything we do.

“I would argue whatever the dollar amount is, you should keep it the same and spread it out over 120, 118, spread it out over 118 instead of 105 and not do any bloodshed. “That’s the unfortunate part, in my opinion,” said Ferentz.

As Iowa faced the reality of the 105-player roster limit, the Hawkeyes had those difficult conversations this month. This can be seen by the number of players who have left Iowa’s program via the transfer portal.

Ferentz shared how the Hawkeyes approached these conversations with their players.

“There are several ways to do this. I don’t know how others do it. I’ve heard other people approach this differently. As a team we felt strongly that we owed it to any player who might be in danger to let them know what their status was a week after our last game and to give them the opportunity to go out and prepare for anything what he wants to prepare for.

“At this point, people have left the program. You have left the program. We have other people who go to other places but stay with the program throughout the bowl. Everyone gets bowl gifts and so on. Everyone had the opportunity to stay with us, go to the bowl site and play with us as a team member. They had the opportunity to do whatever they wanted. We have let other boys leave and have already found other houses. We just felt like it was the right thing to give them a chance, if they want to prepare for the future, do it. If they want to stay here, that’s great too. It was hard,” Ferentz said.

As Iowa looks to the future, Ferentz expressed concerns about how teams with injuries will handle the 105-player roster limit during a season.

“Then the whole next chapter will be really interesting because you’re training with 105 guys in college football. This isn’t the NFL. No one has even pointed out what happens when a guy has a season-ending injury. We can’t go out and get someone to replace this guy. It makes practicing challenging, makes developing a team challenging.

“These are questions or discussions for the period after January. I’m not looking forward to that. I think it impacts a program like ours more than other people who recruit five-star athletes every year because they’re a little more ready. That’s how it works. We’ll find a way to take advantage of it,” Ferentz said.

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