I noticed that there are players on the Longhorns squad that share the same number. One on D and one on O. When did that start and why? Please help. Also McCoy share shis number witha fella on D.
Happens when you have too many players for numbers 1-99, and in some cases (probably) when you have two recruits who want the same number and aren't ever going to be on the field at the same time. I don't know when or where it first happened. QB John David Booty and LB Brian Cushing both wore #10 for USC in 2006 and 2007.
Most of the big time college teams do this because of the size of their rosters. It's been like this for a while now, actually. The only rule is that players with duplicate numbers cannot be on the field at the same time.
i don't think it's a roster size thing anymore. back in the day, schools would dress 100 players or so, but I thought there was a limit on only 80 players dressing or something? if that's the case, the don't HAVE to share numbers.
i thought I remember there being a limit on travelling parties and number of players who can be in uniform on a sideline .... but i'm not a heavy college football follower, so what the hell do I know?
Teams definitely travel to away games with smaller numbers of players than they have on the sidelines at home games, but the reasoning is simply for financial purposes. But the home team quite often dresses all of their players on gameday. The "player limit" imposed by the NCAA, as ElJefe points out, deals with the number of student-athlete scholarships a school can make available for their football team. In the FBS (Div 1-A), teams are allowed to have up to 85 players on scholarship. They are, however, also allowed to have a number of additional walk-on players on the roster who are not on scholarship.
I first noticed it watching Washington back in the late '80s. I was confused as hell before I figured out there were 2 guys
It should also be noted that any player cannot wear any number. So if you have a DB added to the team, they can't just give him #78 (Because DBs aren't allowed to wear that number).