In my experience, many more established programs will specifically hold a portion of their allotted scholarship money for recruits who are good enough to play there, but whose families cannot afford the tuition or are unwilling to help. I’d generalize that there a lot more boxes that need checking (grades, attitude, maturity, work ethic) for a coach to stick his neck out like that, but it happens.

And no actual roster is 50-70 guys. If you want to count practice players, walk-ons, redshirts, academically ineligible, medical...et al., well by all means, but we both know that most of those guys aren’t vying for scholarship dollars.

At the end of the day, we’re talking 12.6 for 40, at most. And of that 40, how many attended prep schools and have wealthy parents who will gladly pay what a token 1/4 athletic ride doesn’t cover? I’d say half, at minimum. So now you’ve got ~8.9 for 20, and that doesn’t take into account guys who are on academic rides, guys whose families are so wealthy they don’t want any athletic money, ROTC guys, and a hundred other rare cases where players don’t need athletic money or just want to pay it forward to players who really need it. Based on my experience, I’d estimate that, outside of the teams with coaches who “pride themselves” on not giving anyone a full ride (and they’re mostly retired by now bc they’re old), every team at the D1 level (save for the military schools) has at least one player on a full ride.

Don’t purposely skew math to favor your argument. It’s a dead giveaway that you don’t actually know what you’re talking about.