Josh Cameron’s practice outburst last month would’ve been the turning point in a Disney movie about Baylor’s 2024 season, except for all the S- and F-bombs.

Baylor was in the middle of a bye week after dropping its third-straight game, a 43-21 loss to Iowa State, bringing its record to 2-4 and turning the heat on head coach Dave Aranda’s seat to scalding levels. Cameron, usually good-natured, saw one too many loafed practice reps and snapped, spiking his helmet on the ground and unleashing a year’s worth of frustration.

The PG version of Cameron’s wrath: the season might as well be over if they kept practicing like this.

Since that moment, Baylor has won three straight games, most recently on a game-winning field goal against TCU that prompted a field-storming. The vibes in Waco haven’t been higher, and it’s because a former walk-on stepped up when they were lowest.

Cameron, who leads Baylor in all statistical receiving categories, was nominated for the Burlsworth Trophy last week, awarded each year to the nation’s most outstanding player who began their career as a walk-on. He’s one of three legitimate stars in Texas college football on the Trophy’s semifinalist list. Texas safety Michael Taaffe was named Midseason First Team All-Texas. Sam Houston safety Caleb Weaver leads Conference USA with four interceptions and ranks second in both pass deflections (nine) and solo tackles (49).

“Walk-ons are the heart and center of the team at times,” Cameron said. “They’re doing tasks that no other player wants to do.”

Except that heart is on life support, and all the forces of modern college football are trying to pull the plug. 

Currently, schools are permitted 85 scholarships but an unlimited total roster count. One of the many implications of the landmark House v. NCAA $2.8 billion settlement is removing the 85-man scholarship limit but capping rosters at 105. So, a program like the Texas Longhorns, which has 85 scholarship players and 35 walk-ons for a total roster of 120, would instead have 105 scholarship players. Of course, Power Four programs could stick to 85 scholarships, but would then compete for recruits against schools with 20 more full rides to give.

Given the expense of impending revenue sharing with players in college football, P4 schools don’t want to pay for more players while Group of Five schools can’t afford to. The result is that players won’t have a choice between a preferred walk-on P4 offer and a scholarship G5 offer; they’ll either have a scholarship to the P4 school or nothing.

But that means stories like Cameron and Taaffe, who both had non-P4 scholarship offers and chose to bet on themselves at their dream school, won’t happen. And that’s what Disney movies are really made of. It’s Rudy Ruettiger getting a sack for Notre Dame despite being a five-foot-nothing defensive end. It’s Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett winning back-to-back national titles. It’s Texas’s A&M’s 12th-man kickoff team. That’s what college football is about.

“Yeah, I’m strongly against it,” Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko said in May when asked about potentially eliminating the walk-on. “I think it’s absolutely against college football — what it stands for, what it’s about.”

“What about the stories about all the great walk-ons over time that really shape what college football is about?” Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian said. 

These stories that pop up every couple of years are like hits of nostalgia just before you start asking what college football is actually about, like someone saying ‘Bless you’ before you sneeze. Because this is a sport where all players are paid (which is a good thing), there’s free agency (debatably a good thing) and the conferences stretch coast-to-coast (good for the television networks and couch fans) and there’s a 12-team playoff. Really, the only difference between this and the NFL is that the players are slightly younger and Texas’s starting safety used to sleep at the facility studying how to play three different positions just to get on the field and earn a scholarship.

But all it takes is one guy to sell thousands of aspiring athletes on the American Dream, to represent what college football is about even if it increasingly isn’t. That gave Weaver peace when he moved from Jersey Village High School in Texas to Myers Park High School in North Carolina ahead of his senior year, then graduated high school with no offers. He was offered a walk-on spot at Sam Houston over the phone and committed on the spot that summer.

“I knew if I went anywhere, I have the opportunity to do what I’ve got to do and I’m going to get it done,” Weaver said.

Those opportunities to make room for yourself on the field through hard work are dwindling because off-field forces have decided there isn’t any room.

The good news is walk-ons perform best despite the odds, just like the three pushing for all-conference accolades while their kind is in danger of extinction.