I'd imagine part of the NCAA reasoning is that it's the only way for a school to fulfill one of their bylaws for FBS classification:
"Provide an average of at least 90 percent of the permissible maximum number of overall
football grants-in-aid per year over a rolling two-year period". [Bylaw 20.9.7.4-(a)]

In the 1st year of transition, it would be impossible to meet this requirement under normal circumstances. The previous year would have the former FCS team at 63 scholarships. Even if a team returned everyone and gave out 22 new scholarships (to get to the NCAA max), the team would have a rolling two year average of 74 scholarship players. The requirement is 76.5 over two years.

Now, because of the Covid exemption, we already had an extra scholarship class factored into our scholarship total. It was likely somewhere in the low to mid 70s in terms of scholarships last season. So this particular, very unique situation, should allow us to meet that threshold mentioned above.