Hello friends! It’s been a while. Some of you might recall my name from years of writing a recruiting column for The New England BaseballJournal. That ended a few years back when I left coaching to start my own baseball recruiting advisement business.

As my friend Mark Woodworth has now taken over at The Baseball Collegian, I am happy to be writing again! And boy, since I have last published, so much has changed with college sports and of course, college baseball.

I am lucky enough to talk to college coaches daily not only in my recruiting business but also for the Game Plan podcast I host (by College Baseball Advisors). By talking with these coaches, I am educated and informed on all the latest changes in college baseball.

One of these changes merits discussion. It is called the Designated Student-Athlete or DSA. A DSA is a new rule from the House v. NCAA Settlement and it applies only to Division I players.

Under previous rules, a baseball program could have a maximum of 40 players, but only were allowed 11.7 worth of baseball scholarships.
The new ruling lowered the roster limit to 34 but allowed all of those 34 players to be on scholarship, provided the school “opted-into” these new rules and could afford it. Schools that did not opt-in would not be subjected to these new rules and in essence, continue to do business as they had before.

However, for those schools that did opt-in, some of the current players on the roster and incoming recruits might not have a place on the team due to the loss of the six roster spots.

The courts felt this was unfair as many players who were already playing at a particular school would no longer be able to play. In addition, many recruits who had selected a school based on the offer of a roster spot would have their opportunity lost and maybe it would be too late to find another one.

Thus the DSA was created. Once a player is designated as a DSA, he does NOT count towards his team limit of 34 players and in fact, one designated can transfer and would still NOT count towards the teams’ roster limit at his new school.

Who qualifies / what are the criteria?

An institution chooses to “attest” a student-athlete as a DSA if the athlete meets one of the following:
• They were certified (eligible, on roster) for practice or competition during the 2024-25 academic year (before April 7, 2025) and the institution believes they would have been removed from the 2025-26 roster due to the roster-limit implementation.
• They were an initial enrollee (incoming student-athlete) for 2025-26 who, before April 7, 2025, was recruited or assured by staff they would be on the roster—but would have been removed because of the new roster limits.

This is what is VERY important to keep in mind. This DSA is not going to be an on-going thing in NCAA Division 1 college baseball. It is a year rule meant to help only those in this current situation. In essence, they are grandfathered in to this DSA status.

Unless for some reason the rules change, once these current DSA’s run out their eligibility, this concept and term will no longer exist. A current high school baseball player, as of this writing, will not be able to be considered for the DSA status.

And as with all rules in NCAA Division I college baseball, they have a ripple effect into the rest of college baseball. With less roster space on D1 rosters, this means players will be looking at D2, D3, JUCO, and NAIA opportunities. Many high school players will also decide to reclass or post-grad to extend their recruiting window.

It would seem a good time for the NCAA and member institutions to consider adding in college baseball teams to accommodate the overflow of players that are coming out of high school.

Until that happens, the opportunity to play college baseball is going to be harder than ever.

Wayne Mazzoni coached college baseball from 1992-2022, and currently runs CollegeBaseballAdvisor.com.