Kirby Smart 'stood on the table' to keep walk-ons, Pete Thamel reveals

The House v. NCAA settlement has taken collegiate athletics by storm as decision-makers in each sport have been discussing the potential groundbreaking changes that could be on the horizon. One of which is the potential addition of roster limits.

Currently, every collegiate sport has a scholarship limit that is adhered to. But various non-scholarship players also occupy roster spots, which would be nonexistent under a roster limit model.

A roster cap impacts every sport differently, and recently on the Paul Finebaum Show, ESPN college football insider Pete Thamel spoke on the attitudes of SEC head football coaches regarding roster limits at SEC Spring Meetings in Destin, Florida.

“Another pithy takeaway from these meetings, SEC coaches really want and need walk-ons,” Thamel said. “We’ll go inside baseball a little bit on the language of the settlement, as it has been told to us. Part of the reason we’re having this anti-trust settlement is because people are suing because of limitations, right? So, there used to be scholarship limits, 85 in football, I think it’s 11, seven in baseball, there’s some goofy numbers just to how it’s all chopped up.

“So this settlement is saying, ‘Okay, no more limits, but then rosters have to be capped.’ So in theory, if we capped rosters in football at 100, you’d have 100 scholarship players. And that way there’s some uniformity.”

In certain sports, roster limits would allow student-athletes who typically would be exclusively on a partial scholarship to now be on a full scholarship. But in football specifically, non-scholarship, walk-on student-athletes play a key role for programs. Providing teams with roster depth, scout team players at practice, special teams players and depth, and commonly athletes who eventually earn scholarships as impact players on game day.

“Well, the notion — and again, this isn’t cemented — but the potential of there being the elimination of walk-ons really has these SEC football coaches, and other coaches too, really has them unnerved,” Thamel said. “Part of it is that’s all their backup specialists, that’s how they practice, those are the scout team, those are the twos. If you have to practice all your best players you can’t rest them, there’s more of a chance of injury, etc.”

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart has now become the elder statesman of the SEC following the retirement of Nick Saban. And according to Thamel, Smart has been a strong advocate for there still being space for non-scholarship athletes in college football.

“Kirby Smart stood on the table for walk-ons yesterday. I mean, I can go through the list. Every coach who basically stood up, stood up in defense of walk-ons. I can’t see a world without walk-ons, Paul. I just can’t,” Thamel told Finebaum.

“If you think about Hunter Renfrow, you think about Stetson Bennett, you think about Baker Mayfield, JJ Watt. We could list a whole show full of great feel-good stories and walk-ons, and I just don’t feel like we’re going to get there because again, that would come to some sort of limitation. It would mean regular students on campus essentially cannot go out for the football team unless they’re going to be given a scholarship,” Thamel concluded.

There’s an endless list of star players that started off their career as walk-ons who went on to make a major impact on college football teams and have even graced the NFL stage in some cases. But there are also plenty who are unknown, unsung heroes for football programs across the nation who are valuable in a team’s success. Making the dialogue surrounding a potential roster limit fascinating moving forward this offseason.