LINCOLN, Neb. — Jack Gangwish never got into a game his first three years at Nebraska, and it wasn’t unusual for friends and acquaintances to ask him if he was still on the team.
“People don’t ask me that anymore,” he said.
Ol’ No. 95 is about as well-known as any of the Cornhuskers players now, and not just because of his emergence at defensive end last season. He represents the quintessential Nebraska walk-on, the kid who grows up in the state dreaming of playing for the Big Red and making the folks back home proud.
A year ago at this time, Wood River’s Gangwish was paying his own way to school and dreaming the dream. But he won the confidence of the former coaching staff when circumstances dictated that he play, and play a lot, and he was awarded a scholarship the week before the opener.
Gangwish enters this season as a starter on what may be the best defensive line in the Big Ten West, and he’s one of the Huskers’ six team captains.
“He’s a self-made man,” defensive line coach Hank Hughes said. “I don’t want to take anything away from his athletic ability, but there’s a guy who has worked.”
Gangwish’s only offer out of high school was from Division II Chadron State, which offered him half a football scholarship, and he also considered walking on at Kansas State.
But like his dad, Paul, who walked on at Nebraska as a defensive end and played just enough to letter in 1985, Jack didn’t want to look back and regret not giving it a shot with the Huskers.
