Nebraska exploring roster cuts to bolster football walkon program

Obviously the team's problem (4-8 overall, 3-6 B10, 0-5 away) is there simply aren't enough players. I'm sure that if they had 13 more guys on the roster, they would definitely be closer to a .500 record.

Granted, Nebraska's XC program isn't phenomenal, (8th in the Big 10 Championship), but they still beat 4 programs within the conference (I didn't feel like taking the time to score out Big 10s in duel format to see if anything changes) which is more than their football program, with probably a minimal budgetary concern.

cdawgxc wrote:

Obviously the team's problem (4-8 overall, 3-6 B10, 0-5 away) is there simply aren't enough players. I'm sure that if they had 13 more guys on the roster, they would definitely be closer to a .500 record.

Wrong, this year was there first year with there new head coach. They are currently rebuilding the program. Expect great things.

you are wrong wrote:

cdawgxc wrote:

Obviously the team's problem (4-8 overall, 3-6 B10, 0-5 away) is there simply aren't enough players. I'm sure that if they had 13 more guys on the roster, they would definitely be closer to a .500 record.

Wrong, this year was there first year with there new head coach. They are currently rebuilding the program. Expect great things.

Programs like that always go in up and down cycles. Only the locals care.

On another note they should take football entirely out of the Title IX calculations for male-female roster count balance. Football's (and men's bball's) job is to market the school and the other sports contain actual student athletes.

NU really really really wants to re-live the old glory days in football. Which included no roster limits at the time, I think.

Roided up linemen 10 deep at each position. The starters for a particular season had been in the program learning the same offense and bulking up to mammoth size for three or four years. Dudes graduate, new monster steps in. A well-oiled machine it was.

Times change though

John Utah wrote:

NU really really really wants to re-live the old glory days in football. Which included no roster limits at the time, I think.

Roided up linemen 10 deep at each position. The starters for a particular season had been in the program learning the same offense and bulking up to mammoth size for three or four years. Dudes graduate, new monster steps in. A well-oiled machine it was.

Times change though

Fully agree. Even Frost is a risky hire...great recruiter but still the jury is out on how good of a coach he is. I expect Nebraska to win the occasional B1G west division but then they’ll face OSU/PSU/UM in the title game and likely not make the CFP. So they’ll be a good but not great program.

The N stands for Knowledge wrote:

John Utah wrote:

NU really really really wants to re-live the old glory days in football. Which included no roster limits at the time, I think.

Roided up linemen 10 deep at each position. The starters for a particular season had been in the program learning the same offense and bulking up to mammoth size for three or four years. Dudes graduate, new monster steps in. A well-oiled machine it was.

Times change though

Fully agree. Even Frost is a risky hire...great recruiter but still the jury is out on how good of a coach he is. I expect Nebraska to win the occasional B1G west division but then they’ll face OSU/PSU/UM in the title game and likely not make the CFP. So they’ll be a good but not great program.

I agree. There are too many other schools throwing so much money at football now. These schools are in "better" locations and have an easier time recruiting and can pay for top coaches. Ruthlessly competitive now.

Not surprised athletic director is thinking like this. And it won't help. Adding a few guys to an already over-filled football roster isn't going to make them better, they would be adding more crappy players that won't even play. They're allowed 85 full scholarships (too many), they should be able to fill 11 good players on each side of the ball with that. No reason they need 150 players on a football team. They're track/cross country roster is probably only 60 max, not even a lot considering all the events. And their track team has multiple conference titles in the past decade, some in Big Ten and many in Big 12.

I know they left, but NU was king when the Big 8 was a thing.

Then Colorado happened, then Texas spoiled the fun. They can NEVER go back, no matter how they try.

The question is, when they have 85 guys already on scholarship, why do they think they need 65 more as walk ons? Seems pretty silly. Would be interesting to see just how many of the current 52 walk ons played even one down in a game this year.

It's a business. Moving up a few places in the B10 track meet does little to generate revenue but getting another few wins in football could generate millions. It is difficult to objectively rate football players coming out of HS while it is very easy to do it for track. How do you compare a 285 lb. lineman out of a small school in Nebraska to a 285 lb. lineman at the state championship large school? You can't. That is why coaches want to get as many guys into the program as possible. This is why it is so difficult for 9:30 3200 runners to find a walk-on spot at a P5 school.

But the Huskers expected great things this year...remember the (now silly) FROST ALERT marketing campaign. Now FROST ALERT does not mean what it used to. It means NE will be terrible as long as he is there. But keep hoping...

Predictor wrote:

It's a business. Moving up a few places in the B10 track meet does little to generate revenue but getting another few wins in football could generate millions. It is difficult to objectively rate football players coming out of HS while it is very easy to do it for track. How do you compare a 285 lb. lineman out of a small school in Nebraska to a 285 lb. lineman at the state championship large school? You can't. That is why coaches want to get as many guys into the program as possible. This is why it is so difficult for 9:30 3200 runners to find a walk-on spot at a P5 school.

Runners are easier to predict. You might have a 9:30 3200 kid who runs like Hunter, and another who runs like Verzbicas. Who would you think could handle a ramp-up in mileage better?

Football is size, form and technique. They've all got it.

Yes, like you said, runners are easier to predict so you need far fewer of them.

Corn wrote:

The question is, when they have 85 guys already on scholarship, why do they think they need 65 more as walk ons? Seems pretty silly. Would be interesting to see just how many of the current 52 walk ons played even one down in a game this year.

You don't know how this works. The ncaa set a limit of 85 for a reason. It wasn't just random. With more players you have a competitive advantage in an injury-creating sport like football, especially on the lines. Depth depth depth....with depth you can have these monsters on the line beef up and learn the system years before they ever hit the field in a game....it becomes a machine, which is what they had in the glory days. Their offense was designed around this formula. And it worked....at the time.

John Utah wrote:

Corn wrote:

The question is, when they have 85 guys already on scholarship, why do they think they need 65 more as walk ons? Seems pretty silly. Would be interesting to see just how many of the current 52 walk ons played even one down in a game this year.

You don't know how this works. The ncaa set a limit of 85 for a reason. It wasn't just random. With more players you have a competitive advantage in an injury-creating sport like football, especially on the lines. Depth depth depth....with depth you can have these monsters on the line beef up and learn the system years before they ever hit the field in a game....it becomes a machine, which is what they had in the glory days. Their offense was designed around this formula. And it worked....at the time.

Yes I do know how this works. But at some point your depth becomes redundant. 85 scholarships covers your entire three deep. Plus today they have 52 more walk ons, which means they have roughly 5 players per position. My point is, if 90% of those 52 walk ons never played in a game, what’s the point of adding 15 more on top of that?

If they never play, most of the walkons just become an insurance policy against some highly unlikely catastrophic injury plague to the 3-4 players ahead of them, and a highly inefficient filter to find 2-3 guys who ultimately play their way into a scholarship.

Absolutely ludicrous to demand cuts to xc, track, and other sports in order to attain a football squad of 150 football players when 45-50 allows for substitutes at every position and then some and 100 would allow for nearly five players at every position. Reprehensible. Moos has got to go.

The other thing is that bigger track teams actually make a material difference in their results. You can basically have as many compete as can achieve time and distance standards, and many on each team can score.

For instance, let's say you get a squad of sixty.

There are, I think, ten events on the track, plus two relays, plus maybe eight field events, so 20 events per gender. With just one entry per event per team and gender, you'd have up to 52 athletes. You need training partners and there are up to ten scorers per event. 120 athletes would not be out of the question at all and remember that the distance runners and mid-distance runners can give you three sports on one scholarship. How do they pay for all that, you ask? Well, why not take a bunch of spots from football. Football has 137 spots and needs only 50. Just borrow 60 spots and football still gets a royal 77 spots, not problem, a lot more than the pros still.

Guys, you're missing the point...

Do you know how hard is to play with only 137 players?

Have you ever tried to play 68v67 tackle football? It just doesn't work. You need to have both teams at full strength and with even numbers so logically 75v75 is the only way to have full scrimmages.

If you were down a player on the defensive line and only had 47 d-lineman instead of 48, imagine the holes that 1 of the 14 running backs would have to run thru! They'd never get touched!

Geez, you insensitive running pricks.

Only 5 men needed to score a XC meet.

Only 4 meets needed to be an NCAA sponsored sport.

Easy solution:

Limit XC roster to 5 team members