Jeff Borchardt, WR from Wayzata Commits to Gophers as a PWO

[TCF=UnitedWeStand]

TCF - Your in left field... Jerry just mentioned on WCCO this am. There are 8 walk on starters on the Northern Illinois team that just played in the Orange Bowl . He also mentioned Nebraska as the model 150 players---- He menioned he had 4 starters this year. Look at Barker and Engel leading the team in yard per catch almost 20 yards per catch. They beat out many scholarship players. They had lower level offers but chose to play for their home state. Football recruiting is a crap shoot. Many great players are missed ... Marcus Williams , Varmah Sonie to name a few exceptional athletes that Brewster wanted to walk on and all these guys are better than alot of guys that got full rides from out of state.

I'm not denying there aren't exceptions, but you take a team with 15 walkons in their two deeps vs a team with 5 or 6 and see what happens over the course of a season. Did you watch the Orange Bowl and see what happened to NIU against Florida State? FSU was bigger, stronger, and faster at every position (and NIU lost to Iowa, by the way).

Yes, point out Rallis, Barker, Engel (who I actually like as a player), Hill, etc, etc, and I'll point out to you again - 2-6 in the Big Ten.

It is important to have walkons, but I'm sorry, if you're program is playing 15-20 walkons regularly for a long period of time, your coaches are either a terrible recruiters, horrible evaluators of talent, or both.

Oh, and nobody has mentioned yet all of the walkons from previous years who never made it - here, or anywhere.

What do you think I'm trying to say here? That we shouldn't take walkons? I never said that. What I am trying to say is that you cannot have a successful program long-term if you are regularly playing a high number of walkons, especially young ones.

And even if you want to point out NIU, how many of those walkons are upper classmen vs freshmen and sophomores? I'm guessing many are the former. If true, I would also wager they didn't have to play as freshmen and sophomores because NIU is an established MAC program.