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The NCAA sets the limit, but the school does not need to provide that many scholarships.  For example, if the limit was 12 scholarships, a school may decide to only provide 9.  This is tricky in that there needs to be balance in both men's & women's sports...  so in this example, if the U decided to add 3 schollies to get up to 12, they would probably need to add 3 to a women's sport, as well, to keep balance.

Good answers from both kopas and Nut.....

The NCAA limit is 11.7.....yes, that does seem a strange number.  If UP is not fully funded, i.e., using all 11.7 scholarships, it is very, very close.

As kopas said, there are a number of endowed scholarships that can get the team up to the full level, and academic success is a big part of that.

For the equivalency sports like baseball, soccer, and men’s tennis you can stretch the budget by bundling academic and need based money with an athletic scholarship, and if a player comes to UP with a 3.5 GPA or above his academic money does not count against the team limits.

So, for ease of calculation say the a full grant in aid is $50K.  And say a student athlete comes to UP with a 3.5 and gets a $20K athletic scholarship and a $20K academic scholarship....those two scholarships cover 80% of the grant, but because the student entered with a GPA above 3.5, only $20K or 40% counts against one of the 11.7 scholarships allowed by the NCAA.

There are of course other formulas and academic achievement levels, but the point is there are a number of ways to keep a program fully funded by using "other" money that does not count against the 11.7 scholarships.

At UP there are usually close to 35 players on the roster and there are only 11.7 scholarships.  As they say, "you do the math."  There have to be very creative ways to fund scholarships but not exceed the 11.7 NCAA mandate.   

So it’s not only important to recruit good athletes, it also important to recruit kids with strong academic credentials.