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From the Rice board: Re: NU vs UNL and Nebraska football

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Eurocat

Senior
May 29, 2001
17,828
552
113
Saw this on the Rice Owls fan message board, fwiw -

Frost has a tough situation at Nebraska. The great Cornhusker teams of the 60s-90s were built on a quirk in NCAA rules. Nebraska has (or at least had) a state law that the top HS student from each county in the state gets a free ride to the University of Nebraska. Under NCAA rules, if these individuals decided to play football, they were considered walk-ons because they were not on athletic scholarship. If you recall, Nebraska had a number of players, primarily offensive linemen, who won national awards (Outland, etc.) who were "walk-ons." If your county had an outstanding HS football player, you gave him the county scholarship and he "walked on" at Nebraska. When you have potentially 93 guys who can get free rides and "walk on" and not count against scholarship limits, you have a huge advantage. You can spend ALL your scholarships on elites from California and Florida and Texas.

The NCAA finally cracked down and said that those had to count against scholarship limits, and Nebraska football has not been the same since.
 
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corbi2961

Senior
Sep 9, 2005
30,524
785
0
Eurocat said:
Saw this on the Rice Owls fan message board, fwiw -

Frost has a tough situation at Nebraska. The great Cornhusker teams of the 60s-90s were built on a quirk in NCAA rules. Nebraska has (or at least had) a state law that the top HS student from each county in the state gets a free ride to the University of Nebraska. Under NCAA rules, if these individuals decided to play football, they were considered walk-ons because they were not on athletic scholarship. If you recall, Nebraska had a number of players, primarily offensive linemen, who won national awards (Outland, etc.) who were "walk-ons." If your county had an outstanding HS football player, you gave him the county scholarship and he "walked on" at Nebraska. When you have potentially 93 guys who can get free rides and "walk on" and not count against scholarship limits, you have a huge advantage. You can spend ALL your scholarships on elites from California and Florida and Texas.

The NCAA finally cracked down and said that those had to count against scholarship limits, and Nebraska football has not been the same since.
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This is a pretty silly post. How many top HS football players come out of the state of Nebraska? Nebraska’s problem is their in state talent pool is atrocious and the out of state kids they used to get to come to Nebraska don’t want to go to Nebraska to play college football.

by the way, what are you doing on a Rice message board?
 
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kaTNap

Sophomore
Nov 6, 2005
2,554
131
63
I grew up 2 mi north of the Nebraska border & have relatives between Omaha & Lincoln, one of whom is a retired professor at the University, and I've never heard of this before. Take it with a grain or two of salt, I think.

Nebraska back in the day definitely did have the biggest walkon program in major college ball, that much is true.
 
Z

zeek55

Sophomore
Nov 21, 2010
3,583
132
0
Eurocat said:
Saw this on the Rice Owls fan message board, fwiw -

Frost has a tough situation at Nebraska. The great Cornhusker teams of the 60s-90s were built on a quirk in NCAA rules. Nebraska has (or at least had) a state law that the top HS student from each county in the state gets a free ride to the University of Nebraska. Under NCAA rules, if these individuals decided to play football, they were considered walk-ons because they were not on athletic scholarship. If you recall, Nebraska had a number of players, primarily offensive linemen, who won national awards (Outland, etc.) who were "walk-ons." If your county had an outstanding HS football player, you gave him the county scholarship and he "walked on" at Nebraska. When you have potentially 93 guys who can get free rides and "walk on" and not count against scholarship limits, you have a huge advantage. You can spend ALL your scholarships on elites from California and Florida and Texas.

The NCAA finally cracked down and said that those had to count against scholarship limits, and Nebraska football has not been the same since.
Click to expand...
The nationalization of the sport from a TV perspective has really changed everything. The schools located near talent hotbeds have benefited the most and schools farther away have had to raise their recruiting game to be able to pull players to them.

Oregon and Nebraska are like 2 sides of the coin. Oregon rose as Nebraska fell, and despite both being far from talent hotbeds; the difference was the Nike connection and the brand that Oregon built that recruits find to be flashy/cool.

Nebraska's brand never really translated well to modern recruiting, and so they're sort of just there recruiting maybe a bit better than Wisconsin/Iowa and other Big Ten West teams but not at the level which really just makes all the difference without the coaching aspect of it.

Given the level that we've been recruiting at, the past couple of years have shown that we can beat most of the teams in the conference if we have the coaching to match.

Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State are really the only 3 that recruit at a much higher level than everyone else (and add USC to that list when they join). Those 3 can go and grab top-flight talent from the east coast/south.
 
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Fanaticat98

Junior
May 29, 2001
8,618
260
83
H

hdhntr1

Senior
Sep 5, 2006
36,186
650
113
corbi296 said:
This is a pretty silly post. How many top HS football players come out of the state of Nebraska? Nebraska’s problem is their in state talent pool is atrocious and the out of state kids they used to get to come to Nebraska don’t want to go to Nebraska to play college football.

by the way, what are you doing on a Rice message board?
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Their OLin particular had a lot of in state guys and those teeams were built on OL. Just saying that it gave them an opportunity and they made the most of it.
 
W

WildcatWillie_rivals223246

Redshirt
May 29, 2001
1,044
30
0
CoralSpringsCat said:
Rice vs. USC today. What’s it like on their board?
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I can answer. Was at a small "viewing party" of Rice people with our USC-educated son. The Rice board (called The Parliament) is mostly in free fall with harsh judgements against the head football coach named Bloomgren. He came to Rice from Stanford, not coincidentally where his boss, the A. D., came from.

Funny thing is that I plan to attend next Saturday's game at Rice vs the juggernaut from McNeese State. Will be going with a person from McNeese, and we might have an entire seating section to ourselves. A shame.
 
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