Nebraska makes plenty of offers to kids that probably don’t deserve it just because they are from Nebraska. They can throw another 1 out there is scholarship numbers are expanded
I'd agree with the offers of people that don't deserve it when it comes to walk-ons... since the walk-on programs inception it's probably close to 90% of the kids that get to be a part of it don't contribute. That basically means that you have to go through 9 players just to get to your one Reimer or Bullock or Boerkircher. We had those 4 walk-ons really contributing last year, but had close to 40 on the roster.
The walk-on program initially started as just what you said anyway, our coaches wanted to get the rich parents with cattle involved so they would donate more having a son on the team, and even get some stuff thrown towards our training table. If all of a sudden your roster is capped at 110 (which is what they are claiming could be the max, could move closer to 100), you are essentially getting rid of all walk-ons. As grad transfers and portal guys are going to take up those spots now.
A former walk-on led our team in tackles in 2021 and 2022, where would our ILB crew be in 2024 if a walk-on didn't decide to come back and play one more year. They are important, and we are basically going to be getting rid of them except for 1-2 per year. I also don't think Rhule can run practices the same way if we start getting capped at 100 players. We had close to 4 full offensive line rotations this year in the spring since we had 22 players there. There were years we only had 8 OL in the spring and a couple of them were injured.
But if you're saying we throw scholarship offers out to undeserving Nebraska kids i'd disagree there. Scholarship numbers getting expanded doesn't matter if the max on the roster goes down. If we go from 85 scholarships to being able to offer 95 but we still have to cut our roster by 40 kids and we were already at close to 100 on scholarship/NIL for 2024, it changes nothing for us.