In 2025, the landscape of college football scholarships is undergoing significant changes, impacting both athletes and programs. The NCAA has introduced new rules that expand scholarship limits and redefine how scholarships are distributed.
A scholarship offer in 2025 college football isn’t always as straightforward as it sounds. The meaning of a scholarship offer can vary with the evolving landscape of recruiting, NIL deals, and the transfer portal.
What a Scholarship Offer Means in 2025 College Football
A scholarship offer in college football is often misunderstood. Many believe receiving an offer means they are guaranteed a scholarship spot at that school, but that is far from reality.
As explained by Adam Breneman in his Instagram post, this is one of the biggest misconceptions in college football recruiting. In truth, an offer today simply means that a school is interested in a player—it does not secure a roster spot.
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“An offer does not mean you have a guaranteed scholarship spot at a school. That is the biggest misconception in college football recruiting. An offer nowadays means we are interested in you.”
Breneman explained how the process works using his experience as the tight ends coach at Arizona State.
“I’ll use this example of how it worked when I was the tight ends coach at Arizona State. I was told to get two scholarship spots in the 2021 class to sign two tight ends. I got to find those tight ends, as we just talked about. That doesn’t mean I offer two tight ends because I’m at Arizona State and have to compete with USC, Penn State, and all these other schools.”
If he had only offered scholarships to two tight ends, both would likely have chosen other schools, leaving Arizona State without a candidate for the position.
Instead, the recruiting strategy is to extend offers to a larger pool of prospects. Typically, a coach wants five to six interested players for every scholarship spot available. In his case, Breneman had to offer around twelve tight ends and determine who was genuinely curious.
Once those offers were extended, the coaching staff ranked the players. If a lower-ranked recruit—such as the seventh player on the list—wanted to commit, a difficult decision had to be made. The staff had to assess their standing with their top choices and determine whether to accept the commitment or wait for a more preferred recruit.
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A scholarship offer in 2025 college football is not a promise but an invitation to compete for a spot without guarantees.
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