Is there a place for walk-ons in the future of college sports?

ON A 92-DEGREE October day in College Station, Texas, a cadet dressed in a traditional khaki-colored uniform stood in front of a 12-foot statue outside of Kyle Field, home of Texas A&M football.

"This," the cadet giving a tour of campus said, "is E. King Gill."

A plaque explained that A&M football had so many injuries, down to 11 men, during a 1922 game against Centre College that it needed help from Gill, an Aggies basketball player. The former football player came out of the stands and waited on the sideline. Gill never got in the game.

"His willingness to support the team provided inspiration for victory," the plaque read.

Gill also inspired what's still known at A&M as the 12th Man, from which one can draw a straight line to the modern-day walk-on athlete, whose future is unclear thanks to a recent court settlement.

On a ride through campus two days before a home game against Florida, the 12th Man is hard to miss. It is written on parking barriers. On a student-athlete's entrance. On the stadium. In the name of a 501(c)(3) foundation. On the field along the sideline. Over a 40,000-person student section which, in an ode to Gill, never sits. There's even a 12th Man Wi-Fi.

On the ride, Alan Cannon, a four-decade A&M athletic department employee, explained how the tradition grew:

In 1982, Texas A&M coach Jackie Sherrill watched students work through the night stacking wood for the school's annual Aggie Bonfire before a game against Texas.

Inspired by those volunteers, Sherrill had an idea for another way to put students to work: an all-walk-on unit that would be known as The 12th Man Kickoff Team. Sherrill advertised a tryout in A&M's student newspaper. More than 200 students showed up.

The tradition lasted from 1983 until 1990, when that season's 12th Man unit gave up a kickoff return for a touchdown against Texas Tech. Coach R.C. Slocum decided to make a change. There would be only one walk-on who would cover kicks and wear a No. 12 jersey. He'd be the 12th Man.

The ride stopped at the Bright-Slocum Center, the program's football facility. Inside, Nana Boadi-Owusu, a walk-on defensive end, waited in a room on the second floor. He put his backpack down and smiled. He said he couldn't wait to face the Gators.

Boadi-Owusu arrived on campus in 2022, 100 years after Gill waited on standby.

Two years later on August 5, 2024, the then redshirt-sophomore walked into a meeting where he felt like something was up.

When the meeting finished, he stood up. "One more thing," Texas A&M coach Mike Elko said, slowly turning around a maroon jersey. Boadi-Owusu was named the 12th Man.

"It was a surreal feeling," Boadi-Owusu says.

After the 2024 season, Boadi-Owusu worried about the fate of his walk-on spot. A looming settlement in the House vs. NCAA lawsuit, which promised to revolutionize college sports, could cost walk-ons roster spots. Details were scarce, and a settlement wasn't final. Elko prepared his walk-ons for the worst. Texas A&M's system for determining walk-ons' futures included a green light if a player likely would stay on the roster and a red light if he likely would be cut.

The ensuing months were chaotic. Boadi-Owusu found out he had a green light and, thanks to a last-minute change in the settlement, that the rest of the walk-ons would be staying, too.

"I felt a sense of relief," Boadi-Owusu says, "not for myself, but for a lot of people."

THE HOUSE VS. NCAA class-action lawsuit was filed in 2020 on behalf of former Arizona State swimmer Grant House and ex-Oregon and TCU women's basketball player Sedona Prince. Along with two other similar suits that were subsequently filed, the House case claimed that the NCAA was illegally limiting the ways its athletes could earn money.

In May 2024, the NCAA and its power conferences had agreed to a settlement. Judge Claudia Wilken granted preliminary approval in October 2024. Over the next 10 years, the NCAA would be permitted to pay $2.8 billion in damages to former athletes who competed back to 2016. Going forward, power conference and non-power conference schools that choose to opt in, would pay players directly.

But there was something else: The settlement also removed scholarship limitations on individual sports, which precipitated roster change. "Let's be very clear," Jeffrey Kessler, co-lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the House case, told ESPN. "... The NCAA has chosen to impose roster limits in exchange for removing the limitations on scholarship limits." Some sports could have increased roster sizes, but several would decrease.

In football, for example, there had been a limit of 85 scholarships, but Division I rosters averaged more than 146 players for the 2024-25 academic year, according to data compiled by NIL service provider Opendorse. Now rosters would be capped at 105. Baseball would lose nine spots from its average; women's soccer would lose five.

The players on the outside looking in? Walk-ons. Yes, some of those walk-ons would have the ability to earn scholarships if more were offered, but many of them -- hundreds, if not thousands -- across multiple sports would be casualties of roster math.

The change would not take place, though, until Judge Wilken granted final approval.

A host of current and former walk-ons, parents and coaches wrote objection letters. The objectors didn't want roster limits at all but, at the very least, asked that the athletes already on rosters or recruits who had already been promised spots be grandfathered in.

On April 7, some of those who wrote letters pleaded their cases in person.

A month later, attorneys revised a proposal for roster limits after a court order. Athletes who lost opportunities would be invited back to compete for spots or go elsewhere without counting against the roster limit number for each sport.

In early June Judge Wilken approved the House vs. NCAA settlement, ending the three separate antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA. Schools also would adhere to a salary cap, to be set at $20.5 million in total athlete compensation for 2025-26. This cap is set to increase every year over the life of the decade-long deal.

By July 6th schools were required to submit their list of Designated Student-Athletes (DSAs) that would be exempt from roster limitations.

"The settlement was specifically designed to ensure a smooth transition to the new approach involving broader limits, including for walk-ons," Tim Buckley, NCAA senior vice president for external affairs, told ESPN in a statement. "Schools and conferences may continue to offer walk on spots and many do, but removing scholarship limits is a hugely positive development for student-athletes as it enables a doubling of scholarship opportunities for women athletes and a massive increase for men."

But during the period of uncertainty, some walk-ons kept their spots; some decided to leave their sports all together. Several of college football's most powerful coaches, like Georgia's Kirby Smart and Steve Sarkisian of Texas, have been vocal supporters of walk-ons but eventually will face tough decisions on keeping them.

While walk-ons likely won't become extinct, their place -- in both lore and logistics -- will never be the same.

Through more than two dozen interviews with current and former walk-ons, coaches and administrators across college sports, ESPN sought to understand what will happen long-term to these players who are underappreciated by outsiders but lauded by insiders.

Several who spoke to ESPN said what will be lost is at the heart of amateurism: An 18-year-old, paying his own way, could go on to win a Heisman Trophy like Baker Mayfield or two national titles like former Georgia QB Stetson Bennett or, like J.J. Watt, go from skinny tight end at Central Michigan to mammoth 3-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year winner.

Perhaps it's an idealistic version of what some people want college sports to be, despite the multi-billion-dollar business that it is.

"Is it romanticized?" asked William Goldberg, a walk-on safety for five years at SMU and one year at Duke, last playing in the 2025 Gator Bowl. "I think, oftentimes, yes." He paused. "I don't think that's a bad thing."

JULIA SEELEY DECIDED to give up what she loved.

Seeley is a sophomore at Liberty, majoring in criminal justice and strategic intelligence. She used to be a runner. In 2024, Liberty had 32 runners on its women's cross-country roster. Seeley said the roster was split into an "A" team, most of whom were on scholarship, and a "B" team, made up of more than a dozen walk-ons. After the settlement was approved, the roster would need to be cut to 17.

"Fifteen of those were scholarship because they recruited more girls that were faster," Seeley says. "And that left two spots open [for walk-ons]." There would be a 5K time trial before the fall season to determine who would fill those two spots for competition, according to Seeley, who in 2024-25 ran cross country in the fall, indoor track in the winter and outdoor track in the spring.

"After I got that news, I had a lot of emotions," she says.

According to Seeley, Liberty's walk-ons were told after the settlement that they could stay with the team and train if they didn't make it. She told ESPN that it was her understanding that the ability to stay and train was part of the grandfathering process. It was a complicated situation, and Liberty was one of many schools trying to trying to navigate it.

Seeley's life revolved around running. But she said she felt betrayed by the system, having made the team already and being required to make it again.

She asked her parents for advice.

She cried about it.

She prayed about it.

She even wrote a letter to Judge Wilken.

And then, before the time trial ... "I just felt like I am done with it," Seeley says

She officially left the team at the end of July.

WITH NEARLY SIX decades of football experience from which to pull, legendary ex-Nebraska head coach Tom Osborne considers a simple question: What makes a good walk-on?

"Well, usually somebody that had a good frame, good potential, and, above all, a good work ethic," said Osborne, now 88.

The coach remembers one player who arrived in Lincoln at 210 pounds and lived inside the weight room until he was 260. He remembers another who ran a 4.9-second 40-yard dash when he was 160 pounds before improving to 4.5 when he was 20 pounds heavier.

"But it took some time," Osborne says.

In 1963, when Osborne was an assistant coach, legend has it that Langston Coleman, a defensive end from Washington, D.C., partially hitchhiked more than 1,200 miles to Nebraska. Coleman became Nebraska's first modern-day walk-on.

When Osborne became head coach in 1973, the tradition continued. Nebraska often carried 150 players on its roster, Osborne explained, only 85 of them on scholarship. That depth allowed for spirited practices during which first- and second-team offenses shared fields with third- and fourth-team defenses, allowing for young walk-ons to grow into their bodies and potential.

The Cornhuskers' freshman classes usually were 40 players: Half of those were walk-ons who the coaching staff thought could develop into something more. Ten or 12 of those walk-ons would see playing time immediately, and others could see time later.

"Some of the values that I saw of athletics was it wasn't always quick and easy, and oftentimes ... [it was] simply learning to work harder, be patient and to be tenacious," Osborne explains. Osborne knew that a teenager's future was difficult to foresee. So he had an agreement with walk-ons: If they got to either first or second on the depth chart at their respective positions heading into the season, they would earn a scholarship. Dozens became starters over the years, including fullback brothers Joel and Jeff Makovicka. Joel became a co-captain and won three national championships, while Jeff was a starter and won two.

"I think many outsiders may think that a walk-on program was just kind of give an opportunity to a kid that just wants to live the dream, and that's it, or just participate, and be there, and that's it," Jeff Makovicka told ESPN. "That wasn't Nebraska's walk-on program. Day 1 you were just like a scholarship athlete."

Now, Nebraska has a head coach, Matt Rhule, who was a walk-on linebacker at Penn State under Joe Paterno. In June, he told ESPN's Greg McElroy that he knows the larger rosters implemented in the past will have to go, but walk-ons will remain part of the program's culture.

"We'll still take some walk-ons," Rhule says. "It'll be, maybe, a little bit harder. But I hope those kids that would've walked on here, now, they're at other schools in the Dakotas, the FCS schools in the Midwest and really elevate that level of football."

Osborne says he's aware of the extra opportunities for walk-ons to earn scholarships and roots for players to get their shot, no matter how it comes, but wishes there weren't limits on their opportunities at places like Nebraska. "I am disappointed obviously because it seems almost ..."

He searches for the right word.

"I don't know if the word un-American is correct or not," he says.

OREGON LINEBACKER BRYCE Boettcher's football career was almost over before it began.

In 2021, Boettcher started as a baseball player. By 2022, his baseball coach encouraged him to try out for football, too. The first time he was on a college football practice field, he watched the Ducks' athletes and winced.

"Man, this kind of looks damn near impossible," Boettcher said at the time.

He walked on to the football team anyway.

In July 2024, Boettcher was selected by the Houston Astros in the 13th round of the MLB draft. He chose to return to Oregon. That season, in football, he earned All-Big Ten Second Team honors, and he's back again in 2025.

Now, he's the Ducks' leading tackler and an NFL draft hopeful. In November, on Senior Day at Autzen Stadium, Boettcher scored his first career touchdown. He did it on offense, where he took an inside handoff and went in from one yard out in a rout of USC.

He walked on in both sports.

"Hopefully, one day I'll be able to play both professionally," Boettcher told ESPN.

With fewer walk-ons, Boettcher explains, there's another price to pay. "I think the program loses some culture," he told ESPN.

"If you didn't have extreme, unmatched passion for the game you're playing and the team you're playing for, you wouldn't be there because of how time-consuming and demanding being a college athlete is," Boettcher says. "So I think all the walk-ons just give the scholarship guys perspective into what it truly means to love the team."

And now that Boettcher is a scholarship player himself, his time as a walk-on has given him perspective, too. On the corner of his coffee table, there's a reminder of what is perhaps his crowning achievement.

"I'm actually looking at it right now as I'm talking to you," Boettcher says.

It's the Burlsworth Trophy.

BRANDON BURLSWORTH WAS a walk-on at Arkansas in 1994, who became a starter at offensive guard in 1996, an All-SEC second team selection in 1997 and a team captain and All-American in 1998. Burlsworth was drafted in the third round by the Indianapolis Colts in 1999.

Eleven days later, he died in a car crash, hitting an 18-wheeler head on.

Shortly after his death, his brother, Marty Burlsworth, founded the Burlsworth Foundation. A movie was made about his life. A trophy was named after him, handed out every year to the best player in college football to begin his career as a walk-on. It has become a part of the College Football Awards Association, mentioned on ESPN every year.

On Dec. 5, North Texas quarterback Drew Mestemaker, a freshman walk-on last season who made his first-ever start in a bowl game, lost to Tulane in the American Conference championship game. Three days later, he won the 2025 Burlsworth Trophy.

As the reality of the House settlement set in, Marty was asked about the future of the award, if the number of walk-ons will decrease severely.

"The award will be around," Marty says. "We will be around to recognize the underdog. The ones that basically very few believed in, but they believed in themselves."

The selection committee for the trophy includes Pro Football Hall-of-Famers like Northern Iowa's Kurt Warner, whose stock boy to Super Bowl story is well-documented, and John Randle, who wasn't a walk-on but played at the Division II level.

"I was fascinated by [the walk-on story]," Randle told ESPN. "And it kind of was familiar to me." Randle grew up just outside College Station, Texas, where he gained an appreciation for the 12th Man. And as a professional, Randle became friends with defensive back Aeneas Williams, who was a walk-on in college.

"If [the House settlement] is instituted when I'm coming through, I don't make it," Williams told ESPN. "I don't even get an opportunity."

Williams explained his story: He was an accounting major at Southern University. As a junior, a week before the season started, he walked on to the football team. The then-Phoenix Cardinals selected him with a third-round pick in the 1991 draft and he was enshrined into the Hall of Fame in 2014.

Williams said he's worried about disrupting the ecosystem of the game. The walk-on, achieving more than he thought possible, shares a field with a five-star recruit who takes his spot for granted. There's a gravitational pull.

"Go online and Google the excitement of college teams when the walk-on got a scholarship," he told ESPN.

Williams seemed exasperated about the thought of losing just one. "That walk-on experience changed my life," he says. "It changed my belief. It changed what I believed was possible."

EIGHTEEN DAYS AFTER her 18th birthday, Gracelyn Laudermilch -- a cross-country recruit -- walked to a podium at the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. She was intimidated. She was speaking in front of Judge Wilken.

She set her speech down on the lectern and read from it, explaining to the judge why she stood in front of the courtroom without an attorney. "Because I had no one representing my interests during this settlement," she said.

Laudermilch is from a small town, less than 500 people. She had a big dream: to compete as a runner at the Division I level. She declined offers from other programs because she had a dream school.

At the start of her senior year, a coach from that dream school told her she had a spot on the roster as a walk-on. But by October 2024, after the settlement's preliminary approval, Laudermilch said she was told the program wanted her but didn't know if there'd be room.

Laudermilch said she cried.

Laudermilch then was one of several who spoke about how the settlement affects girls and women, about adequate representation and about roster limits.

"Please, Your Honor," Laudermilch said at the April 7 hearing, "can you help us understand why the colleges are banding together to limit how many of us get to compete?"

Laudermilch said her dream school, Liberty, extended an offer on June 6. Later that same day, she found out the settlement had been approved. Laudermilch had mixed emotions. She went for a run and thought about how this could affect other athletes. Even though she did get to compete, Laudermilch wasn't done as an advocate. On September 12, she wrote another letter to the judge.

"The roll out of roster limits and [Designated Student Athletes, most of whom are walk-ons] has caused and is going to cause more 'irreparable harm' to unrepresented, injunctive class members ..." she wrote. "An immediate stay on roster limits should be issued."

Then, in early November, Laudermilch and six others -- two lacrosse players and four members of a discontinued swim team at Cal Poly -- spoke via Zoom at a hearing scheduled to examine the fairness of what has been implemented thus far.

"When good things happen in this settlement, it's because of the settlement. We give the credit to the settlement," Laudermilch said at the hearing. "But when bad things happen, we blame that on institutions when the reality is, is that the institutions wouldn't have to make these hard decisions if it weren't for the settlement."

Even though DSAs don't count toward roster limits, Title IX compliance makes it harder for schools to grandfather them, Laudermilch told ESPN by phone three days after the hearing. "They're making people not count toward the roster but count toward Title IX, which doesn't make sense," she said.

When asked about the settlement's negative effects, Laudermilch was reminded of Liberty runners who are no longer on the team, including Seeley, who decided to leave on her own.

"I wake up every morning and I see girls that were cut from the team," Laudermilch told ESPN. "They live in my quad. So, I see they have to completely restructure their support system. They get a different academic advisor and just don't have the support that the athletes have. And they also don't have the team."

Laudermilch told ESPN that she has been treated well at Liberty since she arrived. She said the athletic department is doing its best. "The settlement is the issue," Laudermilch told ESPN. "What school wants to cut kids and make their athletic department smaller?"

On November 13, a week after the fairness hearing, the objections by Laudermilch and others were overruled. Laudermilch said she appealed that decision on Dec. 12.

"So that's what my winter break is going to be," she said.

ESPN presented Liberty with details of Seeley's story about the time trial and reduction of the roster and asked follow-up questions about Laudermilch's claims regarding grandfathering and Title IX.

The school responded via email: "With the approval of the House settlement, the NCAA has transitioned from scholarship limits to roster limits. The NCAA's roster cap for women's cross country is 17, which matches Liberty University's women's cross country roster size for 2025. Liberty remains fully committed to complying with NCAA regulations and upholding Title IX requirements while fielding competitive athletics teams.

"Liberty University will not provide any additional comment or information regarding your questions, nor will we verify the accuracy of the information you provided. Please note, our women's cross country team did win the 2025 Conference USA Cross Country Championship and our women's top runner, Allie Zealand, finished in 21st-place at the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championship."

"WE'RE PAYING FOR a lot of physical suffering," Boadi-Owusu said before the Florida game in October. "And you've got to really love something to pay a bunch of dollars to put yourself through that suffering."

The Aggies beat the Gators at home. Then toppled three straight SEC opponents -- Arkansas, LSU and Missouri -- on the road. And then South Carolina back at Kyle Field.

Still undefeated in late November, Texas A&M hosted Samford, a tune-up game before the rivalry matchup against Texas. Entering the game, Boadi-Owusu had one tackle on the season, recorded against The University of Texas-San Antonio in the season opener.

With 11:50 left in the Samford game, Boadi-Owusu pulled down the opposing quarterback, Quincy Crittendon, for a one-yard loss.

It was his first career sack.

The Aggies are now set to play Miami in the first round of the College Football Playoff on Dec. 20 and have a shot at their first national title since Franklin D. Roosevelt was president.

It had been a long road to that moment for Boadi-Owusu, who doesn't take his chance to play for a championship contender for granted. But without hard-and-fast guidance from the NCAA, the future for players like him is up to both conferences and schools.

The SEC kept its 85-scholarship limit for the 2025 season, allowing for more walk-ons, but its members voted in early December to lift the limit for the next season, effective Dec. 15, according to Matt Boyer, an assistant commissioner with the SEC. Boyer said: "I suspect in the first year or so some very much will elect to be around that 85-scholarship number. So therefore, you'll have a handful up to the 105 that will still be participating without a scholarship."

Boyer said that the 105-player limit is "more reflective of the number of individuals that have any chance of viable participation opportunity." He added: "Part of it is some empathy for the change in opportunity and the experience. But at the same time, it was also a matter of we're trying to transition to a different model."

The Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC did not immediately respond to questions regarding their plans. When asked about the school's future plans for walks-ons, a representative from Texas A&M replied "we do not have a comment on this at this time."

Within the roster limits post-settlement, schools can structure rosters in individual sports -- and allocate money -- how they see fit. "[Hypothetically] a school could elect to manage things differently according to their circumstances than another school," Boyer says. "And I think that's kind of what's within this new structure, is that less regulation could result in different outcomes and decision-making between programs."

Kessler, the plaintiffs' attorney, said that the settlement will allow walk-ons to play at a place that suits them best -- whether that's with a scholarship they otherwise would not have gotten or at a lower level, where they'll have a better chance to play. "We believe that the roster limits are high enough, and the NCAA made the roster limits high enough, that it should be possible for athletes to find a home," he says.

Kessler later added: "That 140th football player may have a harder time."

"HEY, IT'S RUDY," says a man on the other end of the phone. "What's up?"

The voice is of Daniel Ruettiger, the real-life inspiration behind the movie about a football walk-on at Notre Dame who got on the field for three plays. He's 77-years old and lives outside of Las Vegas. He's divorced with two kids. One's a police officer, and the other's an actress. He's working with a cheese company in Wisconsin.

But mostly, he's Rudy -- giving speeches, signing autographs and selling memorabilia, trading on one play from 1975 when he recorded a sack and the film from 1993 that made him famous. There's no one better to ask if the walk-on matters.

Ruettiger talks about how college sports has changed. He's not against players getting paid but worries that the game that transformed him from Daniel to Rudy is gone.

"So, what's happening in college football is a train wreck," he says.

He tells a story that he's told before about Kobe Bryant, beading sweat from a pregame workout, at a Lakers game in Sacramento. Ruettiger was there to watch his daughter sing the national anthem. "Hey, are you the real Rudy?" Bryant asked. "Rudy Ruettiger?" Bryant became emotional. Before returning to his pregame routine, Bryant said that Rudy was his hero.