In the wake of the House settlement, there has been a ripple of concerns going on throughout college sports. That includes how walk-ons are going to be handled in the future. It was a topic that came up during SEC spring meetings, where Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko took a strong stance on the issue.
In particular, there are concerns that there would be a hard cap set at 85 players on a college football roster. That would, in turn, eliminate walk-ons. It’s an idea that Elko made clear he’s against.
“Yeah, I’m strongly against it,” Mike Elko said. “I think it’s absolutely against college football — what it stands for, what it’s about. I think that’ll give a major problem, especially when you look at legacies of Texas A&M kids that are going to get the opportunity to play football at Texas A&M potentially taken away from them. I think that’s something that that’s really bad for the sport.”
There are plenty of individual players in college football history who made it onto a roster by way of being a walk-on who went on to contribute or have a magical moment. For college football fans at large, the idea of the walk-on was popularized in the movie Rudy.
Of course, at Texas A&M, where Mike Elko has previous experience as a defensive coordinator and is now the head coach, the walk-on program is a key piece of the culture. That includes the 12th Man Kickoff Team, which in a way connects the team to the rest of the student body and fanbase.
When the 12th Man Kickoff Team took the field last November, it gave then-interim head coach Elijah Robinson chills.
“That’s what it’s all about, man. How awesome was that?” Robinson said. “Those guys will remember that for the rest of their life. I’m sure their family will. I’m sure the crowd will. Twelfth man, to me, is what it means to be an Aggie. That showed it right there.”
Texas A&M and Mike Elko aren’t alone in this stance about maintaining walk-ons in college football either. Recently, Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule came out and said the potential elimination of these programs would be “awful.” Other SEC coaches, like Steve Sarkisian at Texas and Hugh Freeze at Auburn, have also come out and argued for maintaining and protecting walk-on programs.
For now, though, administrators are still working to figure out exactly what college sports are going to look like in the future. That means, for the time being, the future of walk-ons is still uncertain.
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