I get it. But the number was moved from 100--or was it 120 for a while?-- down to 85 at the behest of the munchkin schools who wanted to pretend to be big leaguers.
85 takes a terrible toll on kids that get sent to geographic school ****holes to play with 2 stars and get destroyed for payday games.
It actually went to 88, then 85.
Edit:
A brief History of Athletic Scholarships
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was established in 1906 as the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States. The name was changed to its current name in 1910. There was no control over scholarships for any sport, but there was a requirement that a school's athletes had to be enrolled in the school they played for. Football schools could offer as many scholarships as they could afford and many had 150 players or more.
1973 brought about the first limitations on football scholarships in order to free up money for women's sports after Title IX was passed by Congress in 1972 as part of the Equal Opportunity in Education Act. This caused the NCAA schools' presidents and athletic directors to push through a limit of 105 football scholarships. Additional reductions were made in 1978 (95) and again in 1992 which brought the limit to its present number of 85 and 63 for Division I-AA.
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N.C.A.A. Cuts Practice, Scholarships And Seasons
The 10 percent cut in football will reduce the annual limit of scholarships per school to
92 from 95 in Division I-A during the 1992-93 academic year, to 88 during the 1993-94 year and to 85 during the 1994-95 year. The cuts in Division I-AA football will also reduce the annual allotments from 95 to 85. In all, most sports will lose an average of two scholarships.
Division I basketball teams will have their scholarships reduced from 15 to 14 during the 1992-93 academic year and to 13 during the 1993-94 academic year. An Unhappy Coach