WWE’s New Day helps Hawai’i walk-on get full scholarship

With the WWE making a stop in Honolulu, the New Day helped the Hawai’i Warriors make a walk-on’s dreams come true with a full scholarship.

On ESPN’s College GameDay last Saturday, the college football preview show took a look at the sometimes surprising and emotional ways college football programs reward players who are often their hardest workers.

Walk-ons get all the trappings of being on the football team without the relative security and status of being on scholarship. They are working for a hope and a dream to get that full ride. When they do, teammates often swarm their teammate and celebrate. It is something everyone seems to recognize and enjoy.

In the Internet Age schools are starting to use this as a bit of program marketing and finding new ways to surprise walk-ons with the announcement. In the ESPN piece last weekend, they showed players kicking field goals to get their scholarship or coaches surprising their parents first or tossing out a t-shirt to the lucky player with the message during a team meeting.

Teams are starting to one up each other and beat each other on these scholarship announcements. Other schools will be hard pressed to beat how Hawai’i coach Nick Rolovich told backup quarterback Hunter Hughes he was getting a full scholarship.

He brought the Power of Positivity.

WWE is rolling through Hawai’i this week on its way to a quick weekend tour of Australia and Japan. With the new SmackDown Live Tag Team champions, the New Day, in Honolulu for a WWE Live house show, the trio brought Rolovich and Hughes to the ring where they helped Rolovich make the announcement.

That is something worth dancing about.

The senior quarterback has yet to appear in any games. And he may never see the field for the Warriors. But this will certainly be a moment he never forgets. Both because he got to dance with the New Day but also because he picked up that scholarship he was working for.

Hawai’i has had plenty of clever and fun ways to reveal scholarship offers to walk-on players. They have made the announcement via a hypnotist performance too. That one was featured in the GameDay feature last weekend.

Topping this one could be tough. There may not be a more popular tag team than the New Day. And they always seem game for hijinx like this. They were definitely willing to be involved in the reveal.

Yet another reason why the New Day rocks. And for this day, Hunter Hughes rocks too.