Watched that spring game scrimmage footage from the other day and it got me thinking about something that's basically disappeared from college football. The walk on. Remember when we had kids who showed up to ccampus with no scholarship, no promises, just a dream and a pair of cleats their parents bought them at Academy? Those were the guys who made special teams mean something. They'd run down on kickoff coverage like their life depended on it because they knew one good hit might earn them a jersey the next week. Now every single spot on the 105 man roster is accounted for by some transfer portal mercenary or a freshman with a NIL deal before he ever steps foot in a classroom. You cant tell me we havent lost something real.
I think about the 2009 season and the guys who walked on and ended up contributing to that Rose Bowl run. They were the ones who pushed the scholarship players in practice every single day because they had nothing to lose and everything to prove. Gary Patterson built that culture on the idea that you earn everything. You show up early, you stay late, you do the dirty work and maybe after two years you get a meal stipend. Now these kids show up demanding playing time and a car deal before theyve even learned the playbook. The walk on was the heart of programs like ours. It kept everybody humble.
You watch Colorado bring in 43 transfers and Oklahoma State flip their entire roster with 50 new faces and you realize there is no room left for the kid from Aledo or Southlake who grew up wanting to be a Frog. He just gets buried under a stack of portal paperwork. We used to have walk ons who became team captains. We had walk ons who earned scholarships and cried when they got the news. That human element is gone. Its all business now and I hate that we lost the romance of it.
The spring game crowd was decent but half those kids on the field I dont even recognize from last year. Theyre all rentals. Nobody is gonna tell their grandkids about the time they transferred in for one season and collected a paycheck. But that walk on who stuck around for five years and finally got his moment? Thats the story that lasts. We are losing the soul of this sport one portal entry at a time.