End of Walk-ons Coming Soon?

Dr. Strangelove said:
I think that's fair, and will address issues of the Nebraska Football program over the last decade, which is that coaches really favored the top 25 players on the roster - to the point of playing a slot receiver at RB - causing the drop off to the backups after injury to be immense. 

This will help Nebraska get better and get to the level of peer programs like Minnesota, Iowa or Kentucky for example. But if Nebraska if the expectations for Nebraska Football are to reach the 14 team CFB and potential win a game in it, they need a serious upgrade in talent. They need to recruit 10 or more 4* players every year as a baseline in addition to having a massive roster to find even more talent. It's going to be hard but it's doable.
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It's called winning!

 
SouthLincoln Husker said:
It's called winning!
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I agree, winning cures all! But, in college football, winning is really hard. The cycle of talent going to the same schools is hard to break, and it's even harder to win at a place like Nebraska with very little in state talent to draw from and buck the trend.

Rhule's approach to football is probably the best thing Nebraska can do, realistically. They aren't going to go and sign 15 different blue chip players, but if they use rules to swell their roster by taking in every semi-talented regional player, they may find enough diamonds in the rough that used to end up at schools like Wyoming or South Dakota State to be competitive. 

Do I think it'll work? No. I think Nebraska has a good chance of becoming an 8 win football team in a year or two, which is a huge leap forward for the program. But I don't see Nebraska knocking on the door of the CFP or being in the running for the conference championship without a massive upgrade to recruiting. 

 
Mavric said:
It sounded like it was going to be in that range.  Which is probably OK, although I still don't understand why schools - or at least conferences - can't choose for themselves.  But there really needs to be a phase-in if they go that low.
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Totally agree, this seems like a decision that should be up for each individual school to decide so long as they satisfy the Title IX and all. Maybe I'm oblivious to the national issues with roster numbers, but this whole deal seems like a solution in search of a problem. 

 
Wistrom Disciple said:
Totally agree, this seems like a decision that should be up for each individual school to decide so long as they satisfy the Title IX and all. Maybe I'm oblivious to the national issues with roster numbers, but this whole deal seems like a solution in search of a problem. 
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I guess there are roster limits about everywhere else so it's kind of hard to argue that there shouldn't be something.  To some extent it will level the playing field in terms of spreading the talent out a bit more.  But I think all it will end up doing is the "haves" will be raiding the "have nots" even more because they have space to add the best players from the lesser teams because their rosters aren't as full to start with.  And they can afford to pay more; maybe a lot more.

 
Mavric said:
It sounded like it was going to be in that range.  Which is probably OK, although I still don't understand why schools - or at least conferences - can't choose for themselves.  But there really needs to be a phase-in if they go that low.
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This does hurt Rhule's recruiting approach significantly though. 

They wanted to absorb all the D1 talent in the region, to keep under the radar guys in house in the hopes they turn into contributers. 

A roster limit of 100-110 pretty much negates that entire approach. They're going to have to make up the quantity with quality, which they seem to be struggling to do. 

 
Dr. Strangelove said:
This does hurt Rhule's recruiting approach significantly though. 

They wanted to absorb all the D1 talent in the region, to keep under the radar guys in house in the hopes they turn into contributers. 

A roster limit of 100-110 pretty much negates that entire approach. They're going to have to make up the quantity with quality, which they seem to be struggling to do. 
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Eh ... I'm not really sure it does.  By my count, we have 93 "scholarship" players right now, maybe a few more than that depending on where you draw the line.  Depending on how big the current recruiting class gets, we may be over 100 next year.  The last 30-ish guys are mostly filler.  So we'll lose out on those here and there.  But we'll also have more opportunity to get the local guys who went to smaller schools out of high school then turned out to be notable players and get them to transfer here after a couple of years.

 
Mavric said:
Eh ... I'm not really sure it does.  By my count, we have 93 "scholarship" players right now, maybe a few more than that depending on where you draw the line.  Depending on how big the current recruiting class gets, we may be over 100 next year.  The last 30-ish guys are mostly filler.  So we'll lose out on those here and there.  But we'll also have more opportunity to get the local guys who went to smaller schools out of high school then turned out to be notable players and get them to transfer here after a couple of years.
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That's a good point, but I don't know if the local guys will necessary come to Nebraska if they turn out to be FCS-All Americans. Nebraska will have to re-compete to recruit their talents against other big time programs.

Rhule's goal was to bring them in house to avoid that, at least that's my take away.

 
Dr. Strangelove said:
That's a good point, but I don't know if the local guys will necessary come to Nebraska if they turn out to be FCS-All Americans. Nebraska will have to re-compete to recruit their talents against other big time programs.

Rhule's goal was to bring them in house to avoid that, at least that's my take away.
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Yes, but the difference between 85 and 110 is a 30% increase in "scholarship" guys.  So that will catch most of the "extra" guys they've been trying to get early.

 
Mavric said:
Yes, but the difference between 85 and 110 is a 30% increase in "scholarship" guys.  So that will catch most of the "extra" guys they've been trying to get early.
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Isn't that roster size basically the same that Frost/Riley had?

Am I incorrect in thinking that Rhule wanted a larger roster than even they had? Or are you referring to essentially taking in more 3* talent because NIL allows Nebraska to take in better players than the Walk-ons that Frost/Riley had outside of the 85?

 
Dr. Strangelove said:
Isn't that roster size basically the same that Frost/Riley had?

Am I incorrect in thinking that Rhule wanted a larger roster than even they had? Or are you referring to essentially taking in more 3* talent because NIL allows Nebraska to take in better players than the Walk-ons that Frost/Riley had outside of the 85?
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The total roster size has been in the 130-140-ish range for some time.  But we've been losing the lower-middle range guys to the Dakota schools (and other smaller schools) more over the last 10-15 years because they could get scholarships there instead of walking on here.  Many of the walk-ons we've been getting are the guys who are the next step down from that.  

With NIL money, I think we can make a play to get those guys back.  And we'd have 25-ish more roster spots to do that than the previous 85 limit allowed.

 
Dr. Strangelove said:
Isn't that roster size basically the same that Frost/Riley had?

Am I incorrect in thinking that Rhule wanted a larger roster than even they had? Or are you referring to essentially taking in more 3* talent because NIL allows Nebraska to take in better players than the Walk-ons that Frost/Riley had outside of the 85?
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Frost had a huge roster and got in trouble with analysts doing too much.  Well, part of that was him not showing up to practice on time and someone needed to coach, but I digress...

 
Beat this up, but I think Rhule and company have been pretty creative about finding ways around rules.

Can a coach suit up and practice?  What would prevent a school from hiring on field practice coaches for the meat squad.  Pay em.  If one of them pans out, get them on the 110.

We have 30 on field practice coaches that work "in the trenches" with the team. :)  

 
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