Cal Will Keep Adding Walk-Ons Despite New Rule Discouraging It

Cal wide receiver Trond Grizzell has started 17 games for Cal, has caught 66 passes for 991 yards and six touchdowns, and is expected to be in the starting lineup for the Golden Bears’ season opener at Oregon State on August 30.

But where would he be if Cal had not had a walk-on program in 2021?

“Um, I don’t know,” he said this week, “Probably would have played JUCO football, or just gone to college and lived a non-football life.”

Grizzell is on scholarship now, but he came to Cal from Park City, Utah, without an athletic scholarship – a walk-on.

At many of the top football colleges the walk-on program is being phased out because of the new rules. Not at Cal, which has had so much success with walk-ons over the years that is keeping that program even if it costs them a few scholarships each year.

Patrick Laird rushed for 1,127 yards in 2017 for the Golden Bears. He came to Cal as a walk-on.

Ashtyn Davis has started 22 NFL games and is battling for a starting safety job with the Dolphins this season. He had to beg the Cal football coaches on several occasions to let him walk-on before they finally relented and let him join without a scholarship.

Then there is the Bears’ 2018 game against USC, perhaps the best win in Wilcox’s Cal career because it ended a 14-game losing streak to the Trojans and gave the Bears their first road win over USC in 18 years.

On the most critical play of that game, a fourth-and-1 play from the USC 33-yard line with 2:10 remaining and Cal clinging to a one-point lead, the Bears’ offense faced a USC defense loaded with highly recruited stars.

Of the 11 Cal offensive players on the field on that play, five of them had arrived at college as walk-ons, and Laird ran through a big hole for 14 yards for a first down, and Cal won 15-14.

Cal is bemoaning the fact that tight end Jack Endries, the Bears leading receiver last year, transferred to Texas in pursuit of a national title. Endries came to Cal as a walk-on.

And it goes on and on.

Things changed a few months ago. The NCAA House Settlement approved in May set a roster limit for football at 105 players, but it set no limit on how many of them can get athletic scholarships. As a result, it is assumed most football powerhouses will give scholarships to all 105 players on its roster.

Players that were walk-ons when the settlement was approved can remain as walk-ons, grandfathered into the settlement. That’s why Cal has 113 players on its 2025 roster instead of 105.

But players who arrive as walk-ons in future years will count against the 105-player limit. Unlike most schools, Cal is willing to sacrifice a few scholarship players to continue to bring in some players as walk-ons.

“That’s OK, we’re OK with that,” said Cal football general manager Ron Rivera about the resulting loss of a having fewer scholarship players, “because if you think about it, the very end of your scholarships are guys that could’ve or couldn’t have been walk-ons.”

Cal head coach Justin Wilcox is a bigger supporter of the walk-on program at Cal.

“Yeah, I think it’s really important,” Wilcox said. “I think it’s really good, A, for those guys to prove themselves, and I think it’s really good for your locker room. A guy comes in here and didn’t get a scholarship, let alone all the NIL that’s out there now, and walks on and earns his way, and he’s rewarded for that. That’s really valuable for the locker room, and we want to keep that going.”

Rivera said he is “100 percent” behind the idea of continuing the walk-on program at Cal, “because of the potential to finding that young man who hasn’t matured physically, and now all the sudden he has, but has nowhere to play.”

“Because if we didn’t have that type of program Scott Fujita doesn’t have the career he has.”

Fujita came to Cal as walk-on and eventually started 125 NFL games in his 11-year pro career.

So while other schools are filling their 105-player rosters solely with scholarship players, Cal will be sacrificing a few scholarships so it can continue to add walk-ons.

“I think it’s great,” said Grizzell. “I mean, walk-ons, you got to come in every day and prove yourself, and I think a lot of walk-ons here, like for example [tight end] Jeffry Johnson, another guy that comes in, prove to the coaches that you can play, prove to yourself that you can play, just work every day, and you’ll get an opportunity."

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