When Nebraska was hitting on all cylinders, they did two important things. First, they had a program under which local county booster clubs provided scholarships to players from their county; those players were not counted against the 85 scholarship limit. Second, most players were redshirted so that they got stronger and smarter before they stepped on the field. Couldn't we do the same thing?
The walk-on program the Nebraska had probably will never be able to be reproduced with the same success it once had. It's an age of parity in college football now. Those guys could go to other, lower profile schools on a scholarship and get noticed for the NFL now. No program holds the allure except maybe USC to have a depth of talented walk-ons like that. As far as boosters providing scholarships, I don't know. I'd think that sort of thing is against the NCAA rules. Redshirting is on a need by need basis based on depth. No school will truly be so deep at every position with only 85 scholarships to redshirt a majority of their freshmen every year. Also, some players you know will be gone quickly through the program so you don't redshirt them (Chad Jones and baseball for a recent example). Les Miles has shown a liking for redshirting OL, QBs and DL when possible which is where redshirting benefits the most IMO.
Whatever they did, it wasn't enough to stop their program from falling into mediocrity. But I agree with LSUalum. No other program will ever get that kind of program going, and that it's a recruiting violation for boosters to provide scholarships. LSU is at the point right now where most of our players redshirt & take a while to get onto the field. That's about the best that we can hope for. The great thing about that is we should not have those years where we lose several games & blame it on youth. We're not completely above that (as we may find out with CB next year), but no time soon will half of LSU's starters be freshmen like a lot of the other teams around the SEC.
If you go back 15-20-25 years ago, you didn't have as many channels broadcasting college footbal games like you do today. You also didn't have 24/7 sports news like you do today. Before all this coverage began, you routinely saw a handful of teams broadcast on a regular basis. Athletes who longed for exposure had very few teams to choose from. I believe the extra exposure has helped many programs recruit higher caliber players than they could 20 years ago. That coupled with scholarship limitations has somewhat leveled the playing field. The money college football generates now is unreal. Since most mens' sports and almost all womens' sports lose money, schools need to have a good football program to survive. Now that non-traditional football schools are budgeting more for football facilities, they're able to draw the attention of players that wouldn't have given them the time of day a few years ago. Nebraska needs out of state talent to survive. They'll have much more competition for those guys than they did in their glory years. (They also have to play tougher competition than they had to in the Big 8.) Good Luck Bo...you'll need it!
