With the addition of former Florida State cornerback AJ Lytton, Penn State is up to 84 players on its scholarship roster. Freshman OL Nate Bruce was dropped from the roster in June, while another incoming freshman, WR Lonnie White Jr., remains up in the air. White is expected to be a top-50 draft pick in next month's Major League Baseball Draft.
Although the NCAA did grant everyone an extra year of eligibility, for our scholarship chart, we are treating everyone as having used a year of eligibility or having taken a redshirt this past season. We fell this is the best way to denote years in the program, although undoubtedly, there are going to be exceptions that occur for a small number of players given the rule for this season, and that should be expected to be the case for the next handful of years.
A few other individual items to consider:
- We are indicating redshirts for the entirety of the true freshman class (and jucos) who did not see more than a few snaps during the 2020 season, though their eligibility will remain five years to play four.
- In other words, we are treating this as a completely normal "career advancement" in terms of eligibility, simply for the reason that an overwhelmingly small number of players will ultimately choose to spend six years in college football. There will undoubtedly be exceptions to this, but it should simply be noted that we do not anticipate in any manner this being the norm to emerge from this year's one-off.
- The NCAA has decided that the 85-man scholarship limit will be in effect for 2021. However, returning seniors won't count, so Jaquan Brisker and Tariq Castro-Fields will not count against Penn State's scholarship limit this season. Incoming seniors who transferred in - Derrick Tangelo, John Lovett and Eric Wilson - do count against Penn State's 85.
* - denotes redshirt used
^ - does not count towards 85 limit for 2021
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