[Husker] Young Team

[Jon Johnston]

I think if you look around the nation, you'll find a lot of special teams
players are walk-ons at their positions. It allows college programs to bring
talented specialists like long snappers, kickers, and punters in without
hurting the scholarship limit. If they're good enough, they earn one.

I did a lot of looking into the walk-on program for last year's "A Sea of
Red' yearbook. That key about pushing the scholarship players is a huge
factor in making the program a success. Every organization has tiers - if
you could take any one of those organizations and push the bottom tier
performance level up, the organization as a whole performs better. Call tech
support for your Mac or PC next time...... If that guy in tech support
doesn't believe he can move up in the organization, he's not going to do as
good a job if he doesn't.

I think the walk-on program has been hurt more by the financial problems
presented by paying for college than it has anything else. Look around the
state - of the top of my head, you'll probably see the Division II schools
are doing a lot better than they have in the past because of this.

Jon Johnston
http://www.cornnation.com

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 11:44 PM, Steve Stone <sstone at pvtnetworks.net>wrote:

> Aaron wrote:
>
> I feel like you contradicted yourself there. How can recruiting explain 75%
>> of success if it's possible to take walk-ons, who nobody recruited, and turn
>> them into championship-caliber starters? I realize you may have just picked
>> a number there, but I'm curious how you arrived at it.
>>
>
> I can see how Aaron might feel a contradiction, but it's not.
>
> I didn't just pick a number but got it from my dad who was, among other
> things, a football coach and a student of the game. Furthermore, every time
> I heard the subject brought up in the company of other coaches they agreed.
> I've also heard the number as 80% and 70%, for whatever that's worth.
>
> No coach can build a successful team without players who have talent,
> tenacity, and dedication or, as some would say it, turn a sow's ear into a
> silk purse. Just can't be done. That's why the major schools compete
> fiercely for promising youngsters, even the best of whom represent a gamble
> and not always a good gamble. That's why a recruiting class of, say, 24 may
> dwindle to eight or 10 by the time it reaches senior status.
>
> Not all walk-ons are created equal. Most major colleges don't encourage
> walk-ons and treat them from the get-go as inferiors, and as a result the
> quality of the walk-ons they reflects it. Nebraska, on the other hand,
> treats all its players equally, which encourages the better in-state
> athletes to walk on. These kids have deeply embedded loyalty to the Husker
> tradition and frequently they (and their parents) are willing to make the
> financial sacrifice. They train and play fanatically, seldom if ever quit,
> and push the scholarship athletes something fierce. As some scholarship guys
> quit, get hurt, get fed up, get homesick, can't play the game at the Big XII
> level, and leave the squad, the walk-ons remain, and many of them earn
> scholarships the hard way: waiting, working, putting in grunt time with
> lower-echelon tasks, and developing over a period of years into players.
> Matt O'Hanlon is a good example of this. Alex Henery, on the other hand, is
> a specialist so gifted that NU had no choice but to give him a scholarship -
> - after two years.
>
> Grit and determination also constitute a form of talent.
>
>
> Steve Stone
>
>
>
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-- 
Jon Johnston
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http://www.cornnation.com