BY MIKE LUCAS
UWBadgers.com Senior Writer

MADISON, Wis. – Von Mansfield was not the original walk-on, the first player to join the Wisconsin football program without a scholarship. Many preceded him. Many more have followed. But nobody has ever taken the time-honored Badger process of "walking on" quite so literally.

His story is relevant to what is taking place this weekend on campus. Call it a celebration of walk-ons honoring the rich UW walk-on tradition by commemorating the endowment of a scholarship explicitly for a walk-on. All in the name of the late Reverend Monsignor Michael Burke.

"When we rolled this out, we wanted to figure out how we could memorialize this tradition and how we could create great alignment between all the guys who have come through the program and had such great success as walk-ons," said Scott Young, one of the project's catalysts.

"By bonding together and raising money to endow a scholarship for a current player in the program on behalf of former players, we thought that this was the greatest way you could create that alignment between the guys who have gone before and guys who are currently in the program."

Opined Young, a walk-on linebacker from the '90s (1993-95), "The walk-on tradition embodies what the program is about as a whole – selflessness, hard work, blue collar, not a lot of flash, great accountability and nothing but teamwork. It really is a microcosm of the entire program."

Young, Steve Baffico, Chris Maragos, Bobby Adamov and Mark Tauscher were among the early planners or founding members who started kicking around the concept of a permanent endowment. "We all wanted to do something to give back," Tauscher said. "That was the genesis of the whole thing."

One e-mail led to another, and another and it grew into an e-mail distribution list of over 100 ex-players. Once word got out, Young said, "All of a sudden, it started to gain momentum." He cited Adamov and his wife Lauren for being the scholarship's seed donors. "And we all jumped in," he added.

Or Zoomed in. As the case may be. Since the organizers communicated from different zip codes.

"A lot of credit goes to Scott Young for having spearheaded this," said Baffico, a former walk-on wide receiver from the same era. "He had done a fair amount of legwork with the athletic department and UW Foundation, mostly on the mechanics and logistics, working with Chad Kimmel."

Kimmel is an assistant AD and the head of the UW Athletic Development Office. Among Young's earliest contacts was John Stocco, then a director with the foundation. Young was also in communication with Wisconsin athletic director Chris McIntosh, who pledged his support.

"When we started talking about this," Baffico said, "the consensus acknowledgement was that the walk-on program was a very critical part of the foundational elements of our program. We believe it's quite unique, relative to others in the country, in the sense it's a real recruiting tool.

"Coach (Barry) Alvarez and his successors have always viewed the walk-on program as a competitive advantage and something that was taken seriously. Many of us had been part of that experience and had played as walk-ons and had earned scholarships. Some had gone on to the NFL.

"It was an experience among all of us that was quite important – not only in our playing career but in our personal and professional development. We felt strongly about establishing the walk-on scholarship so the tradition could be preserved perpetually for others coming into the program."

Tauscher pointed out, "Everybody we reached out to, they really wanted to be a part of it."
In 2018, Tauscher was inducted into the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame.

"And it's not just that I was fortunate enough to play in Green Bay for 11 years," he said. "You can talk to any of the guys who are a part of this – like a Matt Davenport – we've all taken things that we've learned here and have applied it to being a dad, to being a husband.

"If you own a business, if you work for someone, all those things that you learned, they still carry on today. That's why we wanted to give back in whatever way we could. We know how big of an impact the university made on us not only career-wise but in our lives."

Co-signing that perspective was Baffico, a managing partner and CEO of Four Wood Capital Partners in New York City. The lessons that he was taught as a Wisconsin walk-on, he confirmed, still impact him daily. And he was quick to stress, "I'm not exaggerating when I say that."

Moreover, he defined a UW walk-on on the basis of his own experience here. "It's largely rooted in being an overachiever and goal-driven," Baffico said, "and being able to deal with adversity in addition to being a part of something bigger. You're part of a team, a group of guys, coaches, players.

"It's an experience I'm quite grateful for and I think about all the time because as I look at my everyday life there are many parallels to that experience, the things that you've taken away from it that make you better equipped to be able to do it.

"One of the most rewarding elements being among the founding members and fundraising has just been the reconnection with the program and teammates – some you know, many you don't, whether they preceded you or they came after you.

"But we have now over 100 guys that have contributed to this scholarship, spanning 45 years of Badgers, and the connectivity with a very unique fraternity of players and coaches is probably the best experience I've had as an alumnus since graduating. We have a great tradition to protect."

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At University School of Milwaukee, Von Mansfield played football and ran track. He was the state long jump champion. As a defensive back, he attracted limited recruiting interest from Division II schools like Northern Michigan. A good student, he wound up earning a merit-based scholarship to attend UW.

But the Wisconsin Alumni Association scholarship covered tuition and board for just one year. Mansfield didn't have the financial resources to pay for any additional years. "I wanted to stay at Wisconsin," he said, "and the only way that was going to happen was if I became a scholarship athlete."

The Badgers had just hired a new head coach Dave McClain and Mansfield weighed the prospects of walking on and rationalized, "I knew everything was going to be new and I figured I'd have as good of a shot as anybody else coming in. But it wasn't quite that easy."

Mansfield had a University School rep call on his behalf – someone who had a connection on the staff having previously worked with McClain's secondary coach, Doug Graber. The pitch was to the point, "Hey, I've got a guy who could probably help you out. Can he walk on?"

The answer was yes. Once Mansfield got on campus – he had already been accepted as a regular student and had gone through the admissions processes – he was told, "Just show up at the football office and ask for Coach Graber." Which he did. He showed up at Camp Randall Stadium.

"I'm supposed to meet Coach Graber – I'd like to try walking on," he told the football secretary.

"The team is not here."

"Oh, no problem," he said. "Where is the team?"

"At the seminary."

"Ok, where's the seminary?"

"Out by West Towne."

"Where's that?"

"Right down this street," she said, pointing in the direction of Regent Street.

Mansfield began walking. "I went a little farther and a little farther," he recalled.

He walked down Regent to Speedway and then on to Mineral Point Road. From there, he walked past West Towne to High Point Road and his final destination – what was then the Holy Name Seminary, the site of Wisconsin's preseason training camp. All told, he walked about 5.8 miles.

 The first person that he met was the Holy Name vocations director, Mike Burke. Father Mike.

"I said, 'Where's the team?'" Mansfield remembered.

"C'mon, I'll show you."

"And he walked me to the field."

Mansfield spoke with Graber after practice. He got his tryout. But not a lift back to campus.

"I ended up hitch-hiking," he said, laughing.

Thus began the saga of Von Mansfield, the literal walk-on.

"A walk-on is a walk-on, whether you're a highly-touted walk-on or one that just feels like you got lost in the shuffle and I do feel I kind of got lost in the shuffle," he said, noting, "Kids are now getting recruited with the notion as a walk-on, you will have every opportunity to earn a scholarship and play.

"Back then, we tried out for the team. We weren't recruited by any means. We suited up every day and went to practice, all big-eyed, thinking we were going to get a chance to play right away, far be it from the truth. We had a lot to understand and learn. Rightfully so."

The first thing that Mansfield learned was that walk-ons don't have the same privileges as scholarship players. The walk-ons shared lockers with the wrestlers at Camp Randall. And they had to move all their belongings before home games because the visiting team used that room to dress.

The walk-ons had to eat on their own, too. After a practice, McClain announced training table would be at Union South. An excited Mansfield joined his scholarship teammates for dinner only to get a tap on his shoulder from McClain's administrative assistant who told him, "Sorry, you can't eat here."

The aide was George Chryst, the father of current head coach Paul Chryst.

"Super guy," Mansfield said, "in terms of treating us with as much respect as possible."

Mansfield would eventually show enough promise on the field to earn a scholarship. So would another walk-on from that era, a converted wide receiver from Kimberly (Wis.) High School, Matt Vanden Boom, who would go on to be named a first-team All-American safety.

Meanwhile, Mansfield was a fifth-round pick of the Philadelphia Eagles in 1982. After a brief NFL run, he had a long, distinguished career for three-plus decades as an educator. For the last 14 years, he was the superintendent at Homewood-Flossmoor (Ill.) High School. Dr. Mansfield, 62, retired in June.

"At this point in our careers," said Mansfield, speaking for so many other former Wisconsin walk-ons who have enjoyed post-graduate success in various pursuits, running the gamut from pro football to Wall Street, "we're in a position where we can pay it back …and hopefully it pays forward."

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Young mentioned "an awesome conversation" that he had with Mansfield during the process.

He also shared his own locker room story from the early '90s.

"When Coach Alvarez came in, he didn't discriminate between who could play, who was recruited and who was not," Young said. "However, in those early days, your locker as a walk-on was not in the varsity locker room. Your locker was down the hallway ... a dingy, dark hallway.

"We used to call it, 'The Green Mile.' There was a strip of Astro turf between the two locker rooms, and we had these little stools and makeshifts lockers. There were nails on the drywall to hang our helmet and our jerseys to dry after practice.

"The brilliance of the whole thing, in my view, is that the walk-ons had to walk through the varsity locker room twice a day, before and after practice, and Coach Alvarez was going to make them really want it and work hard to earn their way into that varsity locker room."

Make no mistake, Alvarez fully embraced walk-ons. They became a lifeline for his program.

"What I think was really cool," Tauscher said, "was that you never really felt like you were a second-class citizen in this program. It was always more, 'You're going to get an opportunity, and if you take advantage of it, the best player is going to play.' And then you're going to earn a scholarship.

"When you look back on it, I think Joe Panos was kind of the trailblazer. In the Alvarez era, he set the blueprint for many of us as far as 'This is what you can accomplish if you put your nose down and work.' Joe set that standard. And this was a place that will allow you to do that."

Asked about the premise of walk-ons endowing a walk-on scholarship, Alvarez gushed. Rightly so. He has forever labeled walk-ons as "my erasers." Or in his words, "They made up for mistakes that we made in the scholarship offers." Alvarez couldn't be prouder of the initiative to reward them.

"That's classic of our guys – guys who really care – being part of the team was important to them," Alvarez said. "All the guys behind this scholarship are doers. They've had success through the lessons learned in football. These are guys who know how to give back and how important it is."

Young was prodded into name-dropping the early supporters of the scholarship. So he did. Baffico. Steve Kouba. Maragos. Bradie Ewing. Tauscher. Joe Schobert. Davenport. Joel Stave. Adamov. Jason Doering. Pat Gill. Mike and Dan Schneck. Drew Meyer. Ricky Wagner. Matt Unertl. Joel Nellis. Jason Eck. Vitaly Pisetsky. Mike Brin. Alex Erickson. Jeff Wirth. Korey Manley. Ken DeBusche. Ben Strickland. Jeff Weyker. And so on and so on. The list continues to grow and is not limited to walk-ons.

"This is about bridging all these generations," Young emphasized.

"When I got there," Schobert said, "there was already a blue-print of how to be a walk-on and be successful. I just knew if I did things the right way like the guys who had been before me, I'd be able to contribute and be a part of the team and add my name to the legacy."

Schobert listed Jim Leonhard, J.J. Watt and Jared Abbrederis as his walk-on role models.

"It reinforces what we're trying to preach here," said Jack Cichy, accenting the importance of the former walk-ons endowing this tender. "It's telling the guys currently here, 'We've all made it through, we've made it out, so it's possible to really contribute and then be rewarded for that.'

"It's good that guys can see that … it's the quasi light at the end of the tunnel … this is a doable thing. It's not a massive undertaking by any means. But it's something that once you go through it, you'll be a part of a special brotherhood within the University of Wisconsin."

Attaching Father Mike's name to the endowed scholarship was the exclamation point.

"His love for the program came through to everyone involved," Tauscher said. "It was just his steady hand and the fact that if you needed something outside of football, you could talk to him. Trying to make this scholarship as impactful as we could, we're happy Father Mike is associated with us."

He was the guiding light for many. Literally so for Mansfield by guiding him to the practice field.

"Didn't matter if I was tendered or not," he said, "he treated me with dignity and respect."

The hallmarks of this scholarship, the Father Mike Burke walk-on scholarship.