Walk-On club debuts with lunch

[HuskerfaninOkieland]

NE State Paper

 

Walk-On Club Debuts With Lunch

by Samuel McKewon

 

September 17, 2008

 

Walk-on. If you grow up in Nebraska, you’ve heard the term 100 times before the fifth grade. Old men sit around and wax poetic about the idea of it. It is, in this state just as common as the local boy who gets a scholarship to Dear Old U and does good. It is the local boy who doesn’t get a scholarship to dear old U, and does good anyway.

 

The term is often used admiringly in connection to Nebraska football. Sometimes – when a blue chip is surpassed by one – the term is used with the slightest bit of derision. Other times, it becomes a verb describing something close to a quest on the road less traveled: He decided, instead, to walk on at Nebraska.

 

There is a mystique about it. And if you believed its heightened visibility in the first year of Bo Pelini’s tenure is little more than quaint, there is about to be a little more financial muscle behind it.

 

The Walk-On Club – presented by the old Extra Point Club to promote walk-ons and pay for some of the expenses related to their inclusion on the football team - holds its first 11:30 a.m. luncheon Thursday at Lincoln Station in the Haymarket. Athletic Director Tom Osborne will speak, as will former Husker Mark Tranmer, the only modern-day NU captain never to earn an athletic scholarship. It’s the first of three luncheons this fall.

 

History and details about donations can be found on NU’s Web site, which has rolled out information about the club in professional, understated way. The gist: The Walk-On Club is open to all boosters, but its donation levels are pitched at fans who may not have the funds to contribute higher amounts.

 

Money goes to help, in Osborne’s words “defray the costs” of outfitting walk-ons and bringing them in the summer before their first season at NU. There’s a plan for a post-graduate scholarship, as well. It won't be used as a scholarship fund for current players; rather, the money will go to NU's recruiting budget and items like lockers and uniforms.

 

Osborne said Pelini's effort this year brought in a crop of walk-on players "as good as we ever had in our peak years."

 

“We certainly appreciate all the help we can get,” Osborne said.

 

The cost of adding walk-ons is greater because of general inflation, and NU’s use of an NCAA “bridge program,” which allows a university to invite players to campus for six credit hours the summer before their first season. Typically used in college basketball, Nebraska employed it to help walk-ons, and scholarship players, acclimate to college.

 

“All but four or five” of the players took advantage of the program, Osborne said. The athletic department footed the bill for their classes and housing.

 

[noenwolf]

I can't wait, it's a club for us regular folk to give our meager earnings. I heard the club house is going to be some guys garage, if his wife lets him.

 

 

Just kidding I think it's a great idea can someone lend me money to join. I'm thinking a couple thou, don't want to look cheap.