In 2013, Kasey Carson redshirtted as a walk-on member of WMU's defensive scout team. Today, he is a walk-on no more, and he found out from a rather unlikely source.
As if being called upon to tackle his head coach - who suited up game-ready in full pads - wasn't surprising enough, Sylvester Stallone appeared on every screen at Waldo Stadium to present the redshirt sophomore from Battle Creek, MI with a hard earned scholarship. The actor most known for his role as Rocky Balboa in his many forms even had a go at rowing the boat, alongside former Bronco football player Alec Gores.
Not many division one head coaches are coming out of the tunnel in full pads dressed as an NCAA football video game create-a-player, but then again WMU hasn't been your typical division one program. P.J. Fleck exited the tunnel, fog and all, and offered his team an evening free of meetings should someone stop him from scoring. The catch? Fleck got to choose the player, and that player was Carson.
The bar on these types of walk-on scholarship videos has been set extremely high following Eastern Michigan using the police to award a full-ride, and Ball State's game show scholarship. Nobody should be surprised that Fleck and company, the clever minds behind last year's "onside scholarship," didn't go quietly into the fall without setting the bar just one notch higher.