WALK ON PROGRAM Here's a chilling stat. I'm sure you all know that the 1995 team is ranked the greatest ever. Just in case i haven't reminded you in a month or 2. :wink: 1995: 179 players total and 107 Nebraskans (60%), 1 JUCO 2007: 129 players total and 52 Nebraskans (40%), 16 JUCOS - nearly 20% of all scholarship players.
Huskerman, No doubt! I just posted on this topic on the "why do NFL coaches suck?" thread but what the hey. I'm avoiding helping the wife and mom-in-law trim the tree so I have plenty of time to elaborate: The pros have enough money to put the best-of-the-best possible athletes at every position. While one would think that makes for a better game, it actually makes it more bland. Pro teams have relatively few weak points, relative to college teams. Good college gameplans (like Osborne's old I-Option) exploit the variation in talent: The option, like the wishbone before it, is designed to pit the best ball carriers against the worst defenders. So in college, a team needs more than 5-star talent because there isn't enough to go around. They also need a solid supporting cast. This is where Osborne's walk-on program was so valuable. They take a Sandhills kid without much God-given talent and throw him into Epley's weight room where they exploit his dairy farmer work ethic to make him huge. Then they run a game plan where this brute blasts open holes for the real studs like Rathman and Rozier. A great side benefit is that the walk-on inspires and shames the 5-stars with his work ethic. And now, with parity, the ability to field good average players is more important than ever. Ask Kansas. ~Matt
Honestly, I don't blame or hate Callahan near as much as I do Pederson. With 20/20 hindsight we can see that it was pure idiocy to fire the competent but uninspiring Solich when there was no obvious replacement in the wings and roll the dice on getting someone better. So Pedey had to sell us on the idea of Cally to cover his ass on the Solich fiasco. I liked the choice of Cally at the time and so did most fans, with the exception of those who thought Solich got jobbed. Well, Solich DID get jobbed but I don't think we'd be in wildly better shape if we kept him. The biggest mistake was Pederson's idea that Cally would be a great recruiter because NFL teams run his system. As I wrote elsewhere, a coach can only be a great recruiter AFTER he has produced wins on the field with his predecessor's players. Cally's WCO clearly requires a stud quarterback but Taylor and Keller plainly aren't NFL material, despite our allegedly NFL system. Also, the idea that Cally was a big success in the NFL was oversold by Pedey. He got a team to the Super Bowl, lost, and the team disintegrated the next year. What little success he had may be more attributable to the players involved or the GM than to the head coach. Time will show that the Callahan hire was a brainfart on par with Schnellenberger to Oklahoma. Our children will want to know what the hell we were smoking. Oh, no, wait. Pederson's BIGGEST mistake was to have arguably the greatest coach in the history of football associated with his program, then alienate him, push him away and piss him off. That was his biggest mistake. Oy vey!! ~Matt
Exactly. Some behind the scene stuff that happened under Dr. Tom was that they would have 2 different practices going with all the kids they had. BC didn't seem to have the time. he wanted to simply work with the 1st team. This points a lot of truths to your points between the pro's and college. Additionally, Osborne would use the walk on's in Spec Team scenarios. Most of these kids never saw but 15-20 plays all year, but ooohhhhh did they give a 150%. How many times have we seen that in past years.
I knew you guys liked your walkon program I just never knew how big it was, while it's apples and oranges....I think the Irish have maybe 20 walkons maybe fewer. Has Pellini commited to bringing the walkon program back to the previous levels? Terry
I don't know that anyone has committed to anything with the walkon program. I did see that just minutes after Osborne's presser, he was on the phone to a kid named Micah Kreikemeier in Grand Island who is a hell of an athlete who was looking at K-State and Iowa State. He was quoted as saying "It was Tom Osborne. You cannot say no to Tom Osborne." The kid would have never been recruited by Callahan. Of course the new scholarship requirements put a crimp in the walkon program so it will never be what it was. Back in the day, Nebraska used to field a freshman team that played a partial schedule against schools like Nebraska-Omaha. I think Solich coached it. 1) Walkons 2) Freshman Football 3) The fumblerooski Three innovations of Osborne's that the NCAA banned for working too well. ~Matt