That smell wafting over from Ames?  Desperation.

:)

I couldn’t distinguish the smell. Failure has been a stench over there for a while. Also, fear.

Let’s just hope he can keep the tears to himself.

are invited by the coaches to walk on, or at the very least they have tryouts sometime in early August prior to the football season for incomming freshmen. ISU seems to be inviting just regular students in the middle of the year to tryout for the team. I would immagine you would get a bunch of Uncle Rico’s trying out for the team to try to relive their glory days. All of this would take place while they are eating a nice fuckin’ t-bone steak.

…there’s a difference between invited walk-ons and uninvited walk-ons. Dallas Clark is an example of an invited walk-on. The coach says they won’t give a scholarship, but they like the kid and he’ll definitely have a spot on the team. The coach will typically say these kids should probably get a scholarship by the time they’re juniors or seniors if they work hard blah blah blah. These kids are usually good enough to get a 100% scholarship to a Div. II school (which aren’t common) and they have to weigh the options of a paid education vs. the chance to play for a bigger program. All Div. I schools do this (or should).

On the other hand, uninvited walk-ons are pretty rare. You have to get them through open tryouts which obviously cost money and time. And since most players that would be good enough to contribute at this point (done in the winter time) are already at other schools, D-I or D-II, it’s pretty worthless.

This worked for Nebraska because the state didn’t have any other D-I schools in the state and the D-II schools weren’t really anything special. Thus, a lot of kids would take the chance to play for Nebraska without really caring that they missed out on playing for Peru State.

When I did it, there were over 300 guys (maybe one or two girls). All they did was weigh and measure us, do a 40, vertical and shuttle run. A mini-combine. They took 14 of us to go through 6 weeks of winter work outs and then spring ball. After the Spring Game, only two of us actually made the team. One was a guy who was initially an invited walk-on but was bumped by a kid that turned down his D-II scholarship and walked on to Nebraska the previous Fall. He was pretty much told he’d make the team if he came. I was the other and I had transferred from the Air Force Academy. I would have transferred to Iowa if Nebraska wasn’t in-state tuition and I knew I’d get a legitimate chance to tryout. In fact, it’s the only reason I went there. I should have went to Iowa instead. If I would have been lucky enough to ride the pine, I’d have been there in ’02. Dammit.

This was the fabled walk-on program that Nebraska scrapped under Bill Callahan, and I thought they were bringing back under Pelini—although I’m not sure.

Anyway, I don’t know how it’s going to play out at Iowa State where there are clearly good D-II schools to go to, and it’s not like Iowa State has the draw in the state that the Huskers have in Nebraska.

I bet it has a failed existence like everything else in Ames.