BATON ROUGE — One of the great all-time entrepreneurial stories belongs to a pair of LSU basketball walk-ons.
While riding the end of John Brady’s bench hand-checking the water cooler as a pair of non-scholarship basketball guards, Jack Warner and Brandon Landry had a dream to open their own sports bar after graduation.
They used LSU road trips as opportunities to visit sports bars across the nation, especially the South, for design and menu ideas.
In 2003, they opened Walk-On’s Sports Bistreaux, a sports bar/restaurant within walking distance of Tiger Stadium. It gradually earned the honor of the nation’s best sports bar from ESPN in 2012.
Today, there are 78 Walk-On’s in 15 states. Walk-Ons even sponsored Shreveport’s Independence Bowl from 2017 to 2019.
Yet all of the above may have never happened for Warner and Landry if upcoming NCAA legislation expected to be rubberstamped in time for the 2025 recruiting calendar year had been in place.
The NCAA is getting taken to the woodshed every time it gets sued. It first resulted in a transfer rule fit for gypsies and made them paid mercenaries thanks to NIL deals with no enforceable parameters.
The latest NCAA white flag-waving surrender – dramatically increasing scholarships in all sports while lowering roster limits – will make success stories like walk-ons Warner and Landry extinct.
College football now has a limit of 120 players on its roster including 85 on scholarship, meaning there is ample roster room for walk-ons though they may never play or eventually earn a scholarship or even dress out for games.
All indications are major athletic conferences are signing off on NCAA legislation that caps the roster at 105 while awarding 20 more scholarships (from 85 to 105), meaning every player on the roster would be on scholarship.
Scholarship increases filling rosters in every sport with scholarship-only athletes would eliminate walk-on programs. Thus, the post-college business success stories of overlooked or late-developing athletes like walk-ons Warner and Landry won’t happen under the new legislation.
Clemson head football coach Dabo Swinney is another former walk-on. He played two years at Alabama as a walk-on wide receiver under head coach Gene Stallings before receiving a scholarship.
It led to a coaching career for Swinney, who has won two national titles at Clemson.
“If (he) Stallings doesn’t see me (as a walk-on), I can’t imagine how different things would have been,” Swinney said recently at the Atlantic Coast Conference media days.
“Walk-ons just want to be part of the team. They want to help you practice. Last season, Florida State had so many players opt out of its bowl game it would have had to forfeit if it wasn’t for all the walk-ons available for the game.”
Current LSU running back Josh Williams first joined on their 2019 national championship team as a walk-on.
“I bet on myself,” said Williams, who earned a scholarship in 2020 and enters his sixth season as Tiger having played in 47 games with 10 starts and 1,011 career rushing yards and 11 TDs.
While it seems like a scholarship increase should create more opportunities for walk-ons to earn free college rides (a misnomer term considering the sweat equity invested by non-scholarship athletes), that’s not necessarily so.
Why?
Because of the NCAA’s inability to lasso any common sense and set parameters for its transfer and NIL rules which have worked hand in hand to professionalize college sports overnight.
It has forced head coaches to increasingly shop in the transfer portal for immediate, experienced talent if they can’t sign their share of blue-chip high school recruits.
It means a barely recruited player, like two-star rated 2017 football recruit Justin Jefferson, probably these days don’t even get the chance to sign a Division 1 scholarship.
Yes, the same former LSU record-breaking wide receiver about to start a fifth NFL season with the Minnesota Vikings after signing a four-year, $140 million contract ($110 million guaranteed) in June.
Current LSU head coach Brian Kelly said he has been in discussions with his recruiting staff and general manager Austin Thomas about operating under the expected increase of scholarships.
“Do you all of a sudden start throwing out 30 more scholarship offers (to sign 20 players)?” Kelly said. “I don’t know that I’m comfortable doing that at this point because we’ve evaluated a lot of players and offered scholarships to several players.
“We have to be very, very intentional in how we do this. We’re going to have all options vetted and be ready to move strategically when and if it gets to that final ruling by the courts.”
Since athletic departments have to pay their schools for scholarships, paying for 20 is another added expense piled on the plate of athletic directors who soon will have to deal with revenue sharing by athletes as well as begging rich donors for cash to stockpile in collectives to buy athletes.
It means wading into every gushing fountain of cash possible, maybe tapping into past forbidden advertising revenue sources such as corporate sponsor logos sewn on school jerseys.
Maybe a future LSU uniform will contain a logo created from Shreveport’s old SPAR Stadium which had my all-time favorite signage on one of its outfield walls.
CADDO RADIATOR WORKS. . .BEST PLACE IN TOWN TO TAKE A LEAK.
I’d buy that jersey in a heartbeat.
Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com