Talent at the University of Michigan's football team is coming from new, untapped places.
Excerpt:
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Michigan's defensive coaches kept coming up to him on the sideline.
"Are you ready?" they asked.
Jordan Kovacs never actually believed he needed to be ready. Sure, he had worked his way up the depth chart to the point where he was starter Mike Williams' primary backup at free safety.
But he was a walk-on, and this was the Notre Dame game.
Still, the leg cramp that was bothering Williams wouldn't go away.
"I blew them off, saying I'd be ready (but) thinking there was no way I was going to get in the game," Kovacs said. "Next thing I knew I was playing in front of 110,000 people at the Big House on national TV."
And contributing at crunch time. Kovacs made three tackles in Michigan's come-from-behind 38-34 win on Sept. 12.
The redshirt freshman from Curtice, Ohio, is one of a number of either current or former walk-ons who are seeing significant playing time for the undefeated and 22nd-ranked Wolverines this season.
That's just fine with coach Rich Rodriguez, who walked on at West Virginia in the early 1980s, around the same time Kovacs' dad was a walk-on under coach Bo Schembechler at Michigan.
Top scholarship athletes from across the nation have been coming to Ann Arbor for decades, lured by the winning tradition, winged helmet and six-digit crowds at Michigan Stadium. Rodriguez's starting 11 on offense alone boasts former prep stars from California and Washington on one coast to Florida and South Carolina on the other.
Despite its reputation as a destination for blue-chip athletes, Michigan also wants to be known as a place where hardworking overachievers hoping for the chance to prove themselves can make the team — and thrive.
"The best guys play," Rodriguez said. "Whether you come out with a four-star or five-star ranking, or whether you're a school-start or tryout walk-on guy, if you're good enough and you prove yourself, you'll play."
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