The boardrooms of Destin aren’t known for universal agreement. At least not the week after Memorial Day when the SEC takes over the gulf-side resort for its annual spring meetings.

One topic, however, seems to have all 16 league football coaches playing for the same team.

Where they were split a year ago on setting conference schedules at eight or nine games, they’re universally in agreement about keeping roster sizes from shrinking.

It’s issue has dominated discussions in the football coaches meetings Tuesday and Wednesday and that’s notable given the multiple seismic shifts underway in collegiate sports. And while they’re not all connected, this one has a direct tie to the most consequential tidal shift — the House vs. NCAA court settlement.

Changes to allowable roster sizes are among the possible resolutions to the case involving compensation going directly to athletes from athletics departments.

In football, rosters that are as large as 120 when including walk-ons could be trimmed down to just the 85 players on scholarship.

“I don’t have the direct answer to the why behind that,” Tennessee coach Josh Heupel said Wednesday, continuing the theme of meeting participants leaving the room with more questions than answers this week.

Complete elimination of those walk-on programs wouldn’t necessarily be seen on Saturday afternoons but would completely shift the way coaches build programs and conduct practices. Scout teams are often largely built from the walk-on corps who toil outside the spotlight but have always played a large part in on-field success.

At places like Texas A&M, walk-ons became part of the program’s identity through the 12th Man tradition.

“Yeah, I’m strongly against the cap,” new Aggie coach Mike Elko said. “I think it’s absolutely against what college football stands for and what it’s about. If we look at what legacies Texas A&M kids who are going to get the opportunity to play football taken away from them, that’s something that’s really bad for the sport.”

Arkansas coach Sam Pittman took a practical look at why roster numbers shouldn’t shrink. He, among others, cited player safety as a reason to keep numbers above 85. Something in the range of 100 would be workable in his mind.

Hugh Freeze has the same concern at Auburn.

“Roster size is something that’s really concerning for us,” Freeze said. “We’re used to practicing a certain way. We’re not the NFL. We’re a physical practice.”

Staying where they are doesn’t seem like a realistic option at this point, Heupel conceded. Change of some sort is coming to this front, too.

“Yeah, absolutely, at some point,” he said. ” I don’t know what that number is. I don’t know what year we land on it but I certainly see that coming forward.”

Count Kirby Smart among those who wouldn’t like to see numbers shrink.

“I do feel strongly that roster spots are important and that walk-ons are important,” Smart said. “Where that falls, that’s what we’re here to decide.”

Smart would know about the importance of walk-ons. He won consecutive national titles with quarterback Stetson Bennett, a former non-scholarship player who eventually worked his way into the starting job and leading the Bulldogs to crowns in both 2021 and 2022.

There are a few different perspectives on the matter.

New Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer, for example, won NAIA national titles at Sioux Falls with rosters nowhere the size of anything found at the FBS or SEC levels.

“Obviously, there’s always a way,” he said of the challenge presented with potentially smaller rosters. “You can ask me any question and I’m going to say there’s always a way to get it done. Would it be a much different look than what we probably do as far as coaches and executing our practice plans? Absolutely. But I guess I’ve always been one to adjust with the times, and you’d have to do what you got to do.”

Texas coach Steve Sarkisian has a similar view. He’s not as concerned if the rules apply to everyone.

“Well, I think the challenge of that is adjusting,” Sarkisian said. “I’ve said this all along. We’re in this era of college football where we have to continually adapt. From the time I got this job at the University of Texas, we were still operating under the old ways. And here comes the transfer portal. Here comes NIL. Here comes conference realignment.

“Now here comes a new settlement and talk of roster size being reduced but through it all, you have to adapt. If you don’t adapt. And if we don’t adapt, we’re not going to be here. I think in the end, if that’s the number, that’s the number. We have to adapt and we have to adjust and we have to figure out the best way to put our players in the best position.”

It got a bit of a shrug from Lane Kiffin.

“I don’t know if I have a great sense for where that’s going,” he said. “That’s going to have a lot to do with athletic directors. Obviously it’s something that’s coming. We’ll just adapt to whatever this is. I feel like we’ve done a good job at adapting to rule changes and different things whether that’s the portal or NIL.”

Speaking of ADs, Alabama’s Greg Byrne said roster changes were inevitable.

“We all have to be open to realizing it’s a new day,” Byrne said. “We’re all guilty, including me, when looking at challenging things and saying I want to try to keep things as normal as possible. And we understand, we ADs understand how important football is to the SEC and they give opportunities for all of our Olympic sports. At our place, we have one sport that turns a healthy profit, football and we have one that turns a profit in men’s basketball and we have 19 that don’t.

“And so you need to be smart at how you manage it but from an efficiency standpoint, we all have to be looking at that and Coach DeBoer and I have been talking about that.”

Florida AD Scott Stricklin sees the reality of the situation.

“There is an attrition that goes on in that game,” he said. “It’s not the only sport we play, by the way, or sponsor that has attrition. But there is a lot in that sport. I do wonder, and again I respect our coach, but sometimes how you’ve done things doesn’t have to be how you will do things. Potentially you just wonder could there be a way to change how you do things, how you prepare? That would not change the safety aspect but you come out OK on the other side.”

Any such changes would be coming down the road a bit, not something that would impact the upcoming 2024-25 sports calendar.

But if you read between the lines, these numbers don’t appear to be remaining at current levels for long.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.