Minnesota head football coach P.J. Fleck paused the Golden Gophers’ spring football game in the second quarter on Thursday for a pretty great reason.
Fleck had the TCF Bank Stadium crowd turn their attention to the videboard, where a video played of him announcing that walk-on defensive end Sam Flecker has been awarded a scholarship.
Why we love spring football today: @Coach_Fleck paused Thursday's spring game to give walk-on defensive end Sam Renner a scholarship.
Sam then got to soak in the moment with teammates and fans: pic.twitter.com/HcELbpRL8K
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) April 12, 2018
We see these surprise scholarships frequently these days in college athletics, and they never get old.
And we’ve seen Fleck have the scholarship surprises in highly unique ways.
Last year, Fleck surprised a Minnesota senior walk-on with a scholarship with the help of a t-shirt cannon. And when Fleck was the head coach at Western Michigan in 2016, a walk-on scholarship was presented by… Sylvester Stallone!