[Husker] Pelini Article

[Nick Chevance]

On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 9:22 PM, Bob Beach <baseballguy at neb.rr.com> wrote:
>     It is very possible many schools don't open up their program that anyone
> that wants to come out for football can do that.  It is likely many schools
> only allow those out for football that are on scholarship.  85 players
> suited up for a game is a lot of players.  My guess are most of the the
> National powers operate this way.
> Bob Beach

I've tried really hard to track this discussion but it seems to slip
out of my grasp just when I think I know what we're arguing about.
But, for what its worth, Bob says the stuff above, and since USC was
mentioned as an example of where population seems to give USC an edge
just by the shear number of potential players in spitting distance of
the campus, I went to a USC fan site.  Interesting.

http://www.teamandras.com/USC/2008_USC_Football_Charts_Rev12_2008_08_17.html

If USC only used the 2, 3, 4 and 5 star players on scholarship, there
shouldn't be too many more than about 85, according to Bob's argument.
 But, the USC roster lists 88 players from California (including 26
walk-ons), and 29 (4 walk-ons) from other states.  While my mind is a
bit fuzzy this evening, my math tells me 117 players (30 walk-ons; 10
sophomores, 8 juniors, and 2 seniors).  That's pretty close to a
quarter of the team as walk-ons.  That seems pretty significant.  And
the total number of walk-ons is not dominated by first year players -
two thirds have stayed more than the first year to contribute - you
have to assume).  And the total number of players seems close to what
Callahan thought was a comfortable number of players.  Dr. Tom, I
thought, liked to have many more players.  So, we'd recruit
(encourage) many more walk-ons.

So, maybe I missed the point of the argument, but it seems that other
programs have walk-on programs, those players contribute, and tend to
stick around as much as scholarship players.  Walk-ons may be more
important to this program (NU) just because we aren't likely to
attract as many as the top recruits as a USC.  But here it was also a
different philosophy on what the walk-on program was intended to serve
- both to attract talent that may have been missed by scouts, and to
make the 'community' of Nebraska feel tied to the program because
Little Joey, former good talent in High School, gets to where the red
N helmet for four years.

But then, maybe I misunderstood what we're talking about.

Nick
-- 
"In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come
into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish
between weather which will melt a brass doorknob and weather which
will only make it mushy."
Mark Twain