Nice neutral article. Is this article written from Ian Boyd at IT? Strong on opinion but weak on substance.
I'm sure some of it is myth but, for the most part, it isnt. Dr Oz had a HUGE walk-on program. What is the total amount of players allowed on the roster today? 110 or something like that? IIRC, Nebbie's 1995 team that went to the Fiesta bowl took a traveling squad of 141 (one article said 165) - traveling squad - Florida had 94. this is huge. Can you imagine what Texas or 0U could do with an extra 60 or 80 players taking PEDs in the S&C program for 4-5 yrs? You dont think a half dozen or dozen diamonds in the rough or late bloomers wouldnt help fill holes in the depth chart? of course they would and that's all that is needed to make a huge difference. I read an article a long time ago that stated that nebbie set some type of record for having the most walk-ons get drafted or something like that. How does that happen if the walk-on program made no practical difference as Boyd suggests? Besides completely making up the star ranking on the starting position chart he posted, he still listed THREE walk-on starters on what some consider one of the best teams of all time. Name me another Championship team that had THREE walk-on STARTERS; and the depth chart had more. The county scholarship was also a thing but nobody could prove that Ozzy was directly involved in pushing for players that were covered by state scholarships. My view has always been, so what? If you have a virtually unlimited walk-on program, then what difference does it make?
For a long time they claimed the largest weight room in the nation (30,000 sq/ft) - ok, so what - but during this time, Nebbie and roids were a big rumor in the '80s and '90s at a time when most of us didnt even know what they were, and it wasnt just creatine. Also, at a time when most of the Husknut nation were putting a lot of pressure on Tommyboy saying he could win a lot of games but couldnt win the big games that mattered. Then all of a sudden, they started producing those huge athletic linemen out of seemingly nowhere.
Did Boyd even touch on the partial qualifier thing? no? that is just as much recruiting as anything else... or at least it was for Dr OZ. If you can grow linemen, TEs and LBs to fill a depth chart, and you can recruit nationally for players that normally would have to go JUCO, then you've got a good foundation in order to build a program. The 1995 team that the article talked about, had 4 starters that were partial qualifiers and two more were major substitutes and saw a lot of game time. On that roster there were 12 players that were partial qualifiers and they likely would not have gone undefeated without them... and Lawrence Phillips who was reinstated on the team just for the championship game... but that's a different sleazy issue.