The NCAA is giving spring athletes — and not just seniors — another year of eligibility due to the coronavirus pandemic that cut their seasons well short, the organization announced Monday evening after a vote by the Division I council.
But winter athletes, who were unable to complete their seasons, will not get the same opportunity in part because they got to finish their regular-season schedules.
Seniors interested in returning for the March Madness experience taken away from them cannot come back.
The vote came less than three weeks after the NCAA canceled all spring and winter championships due to the global pandemic that is sweeping across the country. That included calling off the NCAA tournament for the first time in its 81-year history.
For spring athletes, they will regain the year of eligibility they lost. Their schools will determine how much aid they receive. It can be zero, less or the same as were provided this past season. In baseball, for instance, most scholarships aren’t full — unlike the case in football and basketball — but instead a percentage of tuition. The NCAA is allowing schools to use the Student Assistance Fund for students who use the additional eligibility next year. That also allows teams to carry more scholarship athletes.
“The council’s decision gives individual schools the flexibility to make decisions at a campus level,” council chair M. Grace Calhoun, the athletic director at Penn, said in a statement released by the NCAA. “The Board of Governors encouraged conferences and schools to take action in the best interest of student-athletes and their communities, and now schools have the opportunity to do that.”