A scholarship is aid times seasons. Count both, honestly.
This is the structural read on what a programme can actually offer. Where the roster surface prices a single move and the NIL read works the third-party lever, this one reads the funding position underneath both: how much real aid a programme has, how the equivalency model splits it, and how many seasons of a player that aid actually buys once the eligibility clock is counted. It reads funding as it is, not as it is announced, because a roster place is not a scholarship and a scholarship is not four guaranteed years. And it reads all of it as feasibility, with confidence, never touching a player's rating.
Read the funding that exists, not the funding that is advertised.
Post-House, every NCAA sport is an equivalency sport: a programme divides a limited pot of aid into full, partial, or no scholarships across the roster, if it has opted into the revenue-share model at all. So the number of roster places tells you almost nothing about the aid behind them, and the engine reads the real funding position rather than the stated one.
This is the honest funding read the brochures do not give you: the opt-in decision that determines whether a programme can fund players through revenue share at all, the equivalency split that decides how thin the aid is spread, and the difference between a real scholarship and cash dressed up as one. A recruit choosing between two "fully funded" programmes is often choosing between two very different offers, and the engine shows which is which. Count the aid that exists, not the aid that is claimed.
Illustrative engine read on the real funding-position doctrine (the House equivalency model, the opt-in gate, the uneven funding reality, the tuition-scholarship versus taxable-cash distinction, no assumption a place is a full ride). Composite programmes, demonstration figures.
The same scholarship buys four years of one player and two of another.
A scholarship is not just an amount, it is an amount times the seasons a player can still use it. The new age-based eligibility clock, five seasons within a five-year window that starts at a player's nineteenth birthday or high-school graduation rather than at enrolment, means a gap year or a late pathway has already burned part of the window before he arrives. Same aid, different runway.
This is why funding cannot be read as a flat number: the same scholarship is a four-season investment in one recruit and a two-season one in another, and the engine prices what the aid actually buys. It reads the clock as feasibility, with its confidence, because the age-based model was newly adopted and is still settling, and it never lets any of it move a player's rating. A two-season player is exactly as good as a four-season one; he is simply a shorter thing to fund. Fund the seasons you will actually get, not the roster line.
Illustrative engine read on the real eligibility-clock doctrine (the mid-2026 age-based five-season window triggered at nineteen or graduation, the gap-year and late-pathway consumption, the redshirt rule, and academics unlocking additional aid), read as feasibility with confidence, never touching a KR. Composite recruits, demonstration figures.
Recruiting, the roster, and NIL all sit on top of the funding structure.
Funding is not one decision among many, it is the foundation the other college surfaces are built on. What a programme can offer sets the ceiling on who it can recruit, how it fills the roster, and how the pool is split, so the engine reads the funding structure as the floor beneath the whole college operation, honestly and with its protections in place.
Reading funding as the floor is what keeps the rest of the operation honest: a recruiting board that ignores what the programme can actually fund is a wishlist, and a roster plan that assumes aid the pool does not hold is fiction. The engine anchors all of it to the real, protected, clock-adjusted funding position, and refuses to let an aspirational budget masquerade as a real one. Build the college operation on the funding that exists, not the funding you wish you had.
Illustrative engine read on the real structural role of funding (the foundation recruiting, roster, and NIL sit on, scholarship protection, the House opt-in frame, honest not aspirational), read-only on the KR. Composite structure, demonstration figures.
A roster place is not a scholarship, a scholarship is not a fixed number, and a stated budget is not a real one, so the honest funding read starts by reading what a programme can actually offer: the equivalency pool as it is truly split, the opt-in that decides whether it can fund players at all, and the difference between a tuition-covering scholarship and taxable cash handed out in its place. Then it counts the other half nobody prices, the seasons, because the age-based clock starts when a player leaves school and a gap year or a late pathway burns the window before he ever enrols, so the same aid buys four seasons of one recruit and two of another. Funding is the floor the whole college operation stands on, the ceiling on who a programme can recruit and how it fills its roster, and the engine reads it as a real and protected commitment rather than a brochure, with its confidence, and never lets it touch a rating. Count the aid, count the seasons, and read what is real.
Read the funding that exists. Aid, seasons, and what is real.
Funding & Scholarships reads the real aid position, prices what the clock lets it buy, protects the commitment, anchors the whole college operation to it, and never touches a rating.