University Daily Kansan / Tuesday, November 17, 1987
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Sports
NU frosh flourish, then are redshirted in unusual program
Staff writer
By CRAIG ANDERSON Staff writer
Nebraska defensive coordinator Charlie McBride sounded almost embarassed when talking about the number of players that practice with the Huskers every day.
"Barring injuries we usually have 190 to 200 practice with us every day," he said. "That's counting our team and all the walkons."
Nebraska I-back Tyreese Knox redshirt his first year with the Huskers, unlike most freshmen who redshirt as sophomores in the program there.
While teams like Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State struggle to find 75 healthy bodies to practice. Nebraska is able to field a freshman team with a roster size of about 70 players. The Nebraska freshman team has a 34-2 record since 1980.
This season, all but three of the Cornhuskers true freshmen are playing on the freshman team. Strong safety Reggie Cooper, cornerback Mike Croel are the only players playing on the varsity this season.
"We needed defensive backs this season to help out with our depth, so Cooper and Lewis fit in the best for us," McBride said. "Croel had the athletic ability to step right in and play varsity."
The Husker freshman team is possible because of a Nebraska system of redshirting that is different from all other schools in the Big Eight Conference. While most schools try to redshirt freshmen during their first year on the team, Nebraska lets all freshmen play their first year.
After the first season, the Husker coaches evaluate all the prospects and decide if they should be red-shirted. McBride said almost all freshmen sit out the year after their first season.
"It gives the players another year to adjust academically, athletically and socially to the university," he said. "Unless we have a Turner Gill or Irving Fryer type of player, they're better off being redshirted."
Besides the redshirt program Nebraska also benefits from a walk on program that has produced many varsity standouts through the years. Nebraska's second all-time leading rusher, I M Hipp, was a walk-on from 1977 to 1979, rushing for 2,814 yards and scoring 21 touchdowns.
Hipp is the perfect example of how success and publicity can help continue to keep a program like Nebraska's strong. He was working in
South Carolina when he heard on television about Nebraska's walk-on program. Hipp contacted the Nebraska coaches and was on his way to becoming a Heisman Trophy candidate.
The exposure that Hipp got in his three years at Nebraska helped former Cornhusker All-American running back Jarvis Redwine decide to walk-on at Nebraska in 1978.
"Jarvis Redwine was working construction somewhere when he heard about our program," McBride said. "He called I.M. Hipp to find out how to get to Nebraska."
The Husker offensive unit wasn't the only group the walk-on program helped in the 1970s. In 1977, Nebraska upset previously undefeated Oklahoma 17-14. In that game the Huskers started six players on defense that had been walk-on.
During his three year career at Nebraska, Redwine rushed for 2,161 yards and averaged 7.1 yards a carry. He went on to play three years in the National Football League with the Minnesota Vikings.
The Huskers defense managed to shut down one of the best offensive units in the nation. The Sooners came into the game averaging a little over 40 points a game. Oklahoma running back Billy Sims would go on to win the Heisman Trophy that season. The Sooners had won 15 straight regular season games, including a convincing 38-7 win over the Huskers a year before. Nevertheless, Nebraska won the game.
Out-of-state walk-ons have added to the Nebraska tradition, but the Huskers are also bolstered by a strong in-state pride among the high school system. A majority of Nebraska's walk-ons come from the state of Nebraska.
"Games like that are great for our program, because it gave our walks national recognition," McBride said. "Now the kids from everywhere were writing Nebraska to see if they could walk-on."
with scholarship players and use the same locker room facilities.
"All of their lives they want to play football for Nebraska," Mr. McBride said. "Players who want to try have their entire hometown behind them. It gives us a big advantage to be the only major university in the state."
McBride said once the walk-oncs began their careers at Nebraska, they were treated just like scholarship players. Walk-oncs are housed
"Walk-ons aren't looked upon as a lower form of a human being." McBride said. "They're the crux of our program. Somebody was asking me the other day whether a certain player had been a walk-on. I told him that they could it remember, because they were all treated the same."
roster this season.
The tradition that Nebraska has to attract redshirts was something McBride said Kansas and Kansas players have very few walk-ons on their
Hence part of the reason for the disparities in roster sizes of some of the Big Eight's teams. McBride said he wouldn't trade Nebraska's situation for a Kansas, Kansas State or Iowa State, but he did feel sympathy for some of the conference's depleted football programs.
"I know that Kansas would be able to attract a lot more walk-ons if kids' parents didn't take getting a football scholarship as so much of a social thing," McBride said. "The parents think that it wouldn't look right if their son didn't take a scholarship when someone else's did. They'd rather take a small college scholarship than walk-on at the major state universities."
"When we were playing K-State, it got to a point in the second half where I began to feel sorry for them," he said. "The lack of parity in the Big Eight is a thorn in the side of the conference."
MeBride said that Kansas had some good athletes but not enough to compete right now with the Nebraska team as the alumnus of the college football world
"Depth is the bottom line with the
problems we are looking at," he said.
"Kansas could put out 22 athletes as good as ours, but they wouldn't have the back-ups."
The lack of depth in the Big Eight was hurting all members in the conference, McBride said.
"In order for our conference to get the national television exposure, we need to close the gap greatly between the top teams and the bottom teams. I will said UniTech Big Bangs will said very low. Big games that the entire country will want to see. That will cost the conference a lot of money."
Broncos beat Bears in QB duel
The Associated Press
DENVER — John Elway won a game of dueling quarterbacks with Jim McMahon, throwing for 341 yards and three touchdowns as the Denver Broncos twice erased deficits to beat the Chicago Bears 31-29 last night.
Spending much of the night working from a shotgun formation, Elway brought the Broncos back from a 14-0 first-period deficit and from eight points back in the fourth, finally running the drive that culminated in Steve Sewell's 4-yard touchdown run with 4:58 left for the winning points.
The game, played in 22-degree weather, was one of alternating quarters of dominance. The Bears had the upper hand in the first and third periods, the Broncos in the second and fourth. The final margin was two missed extra points by the Bears. Kevin Butler kicked one wide left and another failed when holder Mike Tomeczk fumbled the snap.
The Broncos, 5-3-1, turned the tables on the Bears, 8-2, whose three previous post-strike games were victories by one, three and two points over Tampa Bay, Kansas City and Green Bay.
It also marked the first Chicago loss in 27 games started by McMahon, who completed 21 of 34 passes for 311 yards and three touchdowns. He also sneaked one yard for a fourth touchdown. It was the first 300-yard game of his injury-marred six-year career.
Elway then directed the Broncos eight-play, 61-yard drive to the winning touchdown.
The Denver defense then throttled the Bears with their only three sacks of the night, the final one sending McMahon limping off the field with 36 seconds left to play.
Ironically, McMahon was also the goat, throwing an off-balance pass that was intercepted by rookie K.C. Clark as the Bears, holding a 29-24 lead, were driving midway through the fourth quarter.
Kansas forward/guard Mitt Newton will have to sit out one more game as part of his NCAA suspension.
Newton suspended on NCAA technicality
Junior guard Milt Newton's two-game suspension by the NCAA was the result of a technicality in paying for an airline ticket during the 1985-86 season, associate athletic director Gary Hunter said yesterday.
By a Kansan reporter
Hunter said the Athletic Department came across some records last week showing that Newton had paid the department for paying his way to the NCAA Final Four in Dallas from his home in Washington, D.C.
The department can pay for an athlete's trip from the University
to a game site or from the athlete's home to a game site, but they cannot pay for transportation to the athlete's home. The ticket sent him to Washington and then to the game site, and Newton paid the department for the cost of the flight from Lawrence to Washington. According to NCAA rules, players must pay the airline or the travel agent directly.
When the record concerning the transaction was discovered, the department reported it to the NCAA and they suspended Newton from the exhibition game and the first-round game of the Maui Invitational with Chinade.
Valesente proposes change in NCAA scholarship number
By CRAIG ANDERSON Staff writer
Kansas football coach Bob Valesente, who has only 79 players on scholarship, will propose legislation at the next meeting of the National Collegiate Athletic Association to change the rule that limits schools to offering only 25 football scholarships a year.
Valesente said he would like to see the NCAA allow schools to sign as many players in a year as they could to build up to the maximum scholarship limit of 95 per school. He said he would include stipulations for schools that had been on probation and were down in numbers.
Big Eight coaches for the most part agreed that something needed to be done to restore parity to roster sizes in the conference.
Kansas State coach Stan Parrish has 73 scholarship players on his roster this season.
"With the rules the way they are now, there no way we'll ever build numbers at the current pace," he said. "As a conference, it's destroying us. I agree with coach Valesente that something needs to be done."
Colorado coach Bill McCartney can understand what some of the Big Eight football have-nots are going through this year. Five years ago, McCartney took over a program that'
6WV
With the rules the way they are now, there's no way we'll ever build numbers at the current pace. As a conference, it's destroying us.'
— Stan Parrish K-State football coach
had only 73 scholarship players. Colorado reached the 95 player limit just this year.
Iowa State, Kansas and Kansas State are dealing with the same kind of numbers this season that McCartney had when he took over the Colorado program. He said he would be in favor of making changes in the current NCAA scholarship rules.
"Any way I can help them, I would be happy to do it," McCartney said.
"Coach Val and I did visit once on the phone and then on the field during the (Kansas-Colorado) game. I told him we had a deadlast, work hard and persevere."
Oklahoma State assistant head coach George Walstad, who has been at the school since 1983, said he wasn't so sure that new scholarship proposals were a good idea. The Cowboys are near the 95 scholarship limit.
"Personally, I'd vote against a proposal like that," he said of Valesente's plan. "Everyone throughout the years has had the same opportunities. Teams just can't afford to make recruiting mistakes. Someday, I think everyone will see the day when they are strong again."
Nebraska defensive coordinator Charlie McRide said he would support the team.
"What we're looking at right now is the rich getting richer and the poor beeing poorer," he said. "We're fortunate at Nebraska, but I hate to see teams getting pounded every week. Right now, Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State are working hard just to survive."
Scrimmage may help in recruiting
By ROBERT WHITMAN
Staff writer
When the Kansas women's basketball team takes the floor at 7 tonight for a Blue-Wine intrasquid scrimmage at Leavenworth High School, more will be happening than just a scrimmage.
The scrimmage will help sort out starting spots and playing time, Kansas coach Marian Washington said. And the program will be on full display for Shannon Bloxom, the Leavenworth High School senior who signed a women's basketball letter-of-intent Nov. 11 to play at Kansas.
The program was on full display Thursday for Kareema Williams, a 8-foot-0 senior at Wichita Southeast and one of the top 10 high school players in the nation.
Williams was not only in attendance at the scrimmage, but she ran the scoreboard clock, said Kansas assistant women's basketball coach Kevin Cook.
Washington said the scrimimage in Leavenworth was scheduled before Bloxom decided that she would sign with Kansas.
She said the intrasquad scrimmages sometimes help
recruiting, but there were other benefits
"It also helps break up the monotony of scrimmaging at the same time and the same place for a month," she said.
One of the players trying to break into the lineup to Michelle Arnold, a 5-foot-9 sophomore guard from Heston. She scored 15 points Thursday for the winning Blue team in the Blue-White scrimmage at Wichita Southeast.
Arnold scored only seven points in 24 minutes all of last year. In spite of her strong showing in the scrimmapage Thursday, Arnold said one game would not determine her role on the team.
"I don't think tomorrow will decide anything," she said yesterday. "It's from the beginning of practice up until tomorrow that will determine anything. There's nothing special about tomorrow night."
Arnold, called the team's top pure shooter in the Jayhawks' media guide, said she hasn't tested the three-point field goal rule, new to women's basketball this year. She has seen teams to field goals taken from 19 feet, 9 inches and farther.