Greatest Walk-Ons in Sports History

Some high school athletes only get a handful of recruiting letters and scholarship offers. Others get no offers at all. To go to college, they are forced to do what most people do and pay their way through school. You may be surprised at some of the all-time great athletes across many different sports who went this route only to end up on the exact same playing field, court or ice as LeBron James, A-Rod, Peyton Manning and Sidney Crosby.

These athletes walked on to their college teams and made the absolute best of their situations. They proved you don’t need a scholarship to become a star and are the greatest walk-ons of all time.

Sport: Football

Position: Quarterback

Schools: University of Colorado, University of Hawaii

Walk-on year: 2003, 2005

Colt Brennan was a walk-on at two different schools with the second being due to his own fault. He walked onto Colorado’s football team as a freshman and redshirted before being kicked off the team due to an offseason arrest.

After spending a year at a juco, he was offered a chance to walk on at Hawaii where he went on to rewrite the NCAA passing record books. He broke the NCAA record for career passing touchdowns, despite playing just three seasons, and finished third in Heisman voting in 2007.

While he was a sixth-round draft pick in the NFL, Brennan never saw the field in a regular-season game. He later had stints with the UFL, CFL and AFL but never participated in a regular-season game so he has no professional football games under his belt.

Brennan died of a drug overdose in 2021. He was 37 years old. 

Sport: Football

Position: Offensive lineman

School: University of Arkansas

Walk-on year: 1994-95

You can’t have a list of the greatest walk-ons without including the prototypical walk-on. Brandon Burlsworth spent two years as a walk-on at Arkansas where he dropped 40 pounds from his pudgy frame and then added back 40 pounds of muscle to handle being a lineman in the SEC.

He was a three-year starter and impressed enough to become a third-round pick by the Indianapolis Colts in 1999. However, shortly after being drafted Burlsworth was killed in a car crash and never played in the NFL.

But for his contributions to the college game after starting out as a walk-on, the Burlsworth Trophy was created in his honor in 2010, and it’s given to the most outstanding player who began his career as a walk-on.