Nebraska’s Matt Rhule addresses future of walk-on program

A legal settlement between the NCAA and the country’s top athletic conferences was officially filed Friday, paving the way for a number of changes to the college football landscape.

Among them is the ability for schools to place 105 players on scholarship, a significant increase from the previous cap of 85 — but it includes a caveat that teams will be limited to 105 players overall whether they are on scholarship or not.

Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule said Tuesday that personal experience has taught him to not react to proposed rule changes until they’re set in stone. Considering the Huskers currently have a roughly 145-man roster, they’ll need to address the issue at some point in the future.

“What I’ll have a responsibility to do is put the best 105 on the roster,” Rhule said. “Players are getting monetized but not every player, so there’s always a negative repercussion; a lot of guys aren’t going to be able to play college football at this level anymore because of this ruling. When you do these things, someone gets paid and someone suffers.”

Given the frequency of roster movement from year to year, the looming roster limit hasn’t yet impacted the number of players Nebraska is targeting along the recruiting trail as scholarship additions. It has changed, however, the program’s long-held walk-on program.

The Huskers added over a dozen walk-ons in the most recent 2024 recruiting class but have been hesitant to make preferred walk-on offers with the Class of 2025, Rhule said, until they know for certain they will have the roster space to add a player.

“One of the great things that we have here is that we have young men who live this university so much that they’re going to pay their own way to come here,” Rhule said. “… The walk-on piece, I’m going to have to wait and see where that all falls out. You look at our staff, most of us were walk-ons, (so) we want there to still be a walk-on program and I think we will.”