If you don’t love all-time sports masterpiece "Rudy," you either haven’t seen it, or like the Grinch, you just have a heart that’s two sizes too small.
Or you may be the NCAA.
For the uninitiated Grinches out there, Rudy dramatizes the story of Daniel “Rudy” Ruetegger, the most famous “walk on” player in Notre Dame Fighting Irish football lore. It’s a classic underdog story of a kid who overcomes a lack of size and talent with tremendous heart to make the Irish football squad of 1975. Though Rudy is a (highly) dramatized movie, walk-on athletes are a real thing.
That is, unless the NCAA eliminates them. Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin isn’t having it. And he’s willing to put his money where his mouth is.
As part of the NCAA’s landmark settlement with the U.S. House of Representatives, one that allows Power Five schools to pay players, scholarship caps have been replaced with roster limits. This is great for smaller sports like baseball that were only able to grant scholarships to half of its roster. But expanding scholarships for more sports means reducing them in others, primarily large roster sports like football. The first scholarships to go will be those gifted to walk-on players who had to earn them the hard way.
During the SEC spring meetings, Kiffin, joined by several other SEC football head coaches including Georgia Bulldogs Kirby Smart and Kentucky Wildcats Mark Stoops, spoke about the importance of walk-ons. In fact, Kiffin believes they’re so important he’s willing to pay their scholarships out of his own salary to keep them.
“The coaches agreed we would pay out of our own salary, give us less money to our salary, take whatever it costs to have walk-ons, and we'll pay it for it out of our salary,” Kiffin said.
Why are Kiffin and the other SEC coaches willing to be so generous? Injuries happen, and when they happen to star players and scholarship athletes, coaches often turn to walk-on players to fill the gaps. The same is true for bowl games, in which more and more players are sitting out to avoid injury, either in anticipation of the NFL draft or entering the transfer portal to play for other teams. Once again, walk-ons and backups pick up the slack.
Sometimes, those walk-ons become stars themselves. NFL players like Green Bay Packers wide receiver Jordy Nelson, fellow Packer linebacker Clay Matthews, and Denver Broncos strong safety T. J. Ward were all once walk-ons at the college level.
If it’s up to Lane Kiffin and other head coaches like him, the tradition of walk-ons will continue, and more underdogs will get the chance to live their dream and play college football… and maybe even the NFL.
