The NCAA is finally starting to loosen its grip on some of the rules that have made the CFB world unnecessarily complicated. The Division I Cabinet introduced a package of proposals designed to push more rule-making power away from the national level and toward individual sports, conferences, and campuses. And one of the changes that stands out is that college football could soon stop caring about how many coaches are standing on the field.

Under D1 Cabinet’s proposal of the legislation to modernize NCAA rules, sports would no longer have a fixed limit on the number of countable coaches. For football, that means the old limit of 11 countable on-field coaches would disappear, allowing every member of a football staff to provide technical and tactical instruction during practices and games.

In other words, if a program wants to build a bigger coaching operation, the NCAA may soon stop telling it where to draw the line. A program could have more people helping players with the actual football without automatically running into the old countable-coach ceiling. 

To understand how big a deal this is, you have to look back at how tight the NCAA’s grip used to be. For decades, the governing body strictly capped staff sizes to keep big-money schools from stockpiling talent on the sidelines.

The last time the NCAA even allowed programs to hire just one extra full-time assistant was back in 2018, bumping the limit from nine to ten. Scrapping the cap altogether shows that the old way of controlling staff budgets is officially dead.

Still, the proposal would leave off-campus recruiting limits in place, with those numbers determined by each sport’s oversight committee. For football, the restriction would allow the head coach and 10 assistant coaches to recruit off campus. National service academies would receive four additional off-campus recruiters.

Josh Whitman, Illinois’ AD and Division I Cabinet chair, said the move is about updating rules that no longer fit the way college sports work.

“Last year, we restructured Division I to streamline our self-governance, increase student-athlete representation and more nimbly respond to challenges facing college sports,” he said.

He added that one of the priorities was figuring out which rules genuinely need to be controlled nationally and which could be handled closer to the schools and conferences. 

After all, college sports have changed at a ridiculous speed in recent years. NIL, transfers, revenue sharing, and massive coaching staffs have made some old NCAA rules outdated. The Cabinet’s proposal is essentially an admission that not every decision needs to come from the top.

“If adopted in January, these changes would represent a first step toward achieving that broader goal,” he said. 

The coaching limits are hardly the only thing being moved around. The proposals would also change official visits. Schools could “arrange transportation and provide accommodations and entertainment for a prospect and four accompanying people,” as long as it follows school rules.

Playing seasons could get simpler, too. The NCAA wants set dates for practices and games instead of tying them to each school’s calendar. It may also ease limits on overseas competition.

Men’s soccer shows where this push could lead. The D1 Cabinet reviewed a plan for a year-round season, with games in fall and spring and the championship in spring. It missed the 75% approval mark, so it now faces a 30-day rescission period. All of this is happening while Congress is trying to build its own framework for college sports.

Congress receives majority vote for PCSA

The Senate recently passed the Protect College Sports Act by a 77-22 vote. The legislation would address NIL, athlete compensation, revenue sharing, media rights, transfers, and eligibility while attempting to create national standards across a college sports system currently operating under a patchwork of state laws.

The bill still has to clear the House before it can reach President Donald Trump’s desk. So college sports is getting squeezed from two directions at once. Congress is trying to establish federal rules, while the NCAA is trying to figure out which rules it should stop controlling itself. 

That makes the coaching proposal more than a staffing adjustment. It is a sign that the NCAA understands the old way of running college sports is running out of road.