New Bucs rookie edge rusher Rueben Bain made several hundreds of thousands of dollars playing college football last season.
His teammate, David Walker, the Bucs’ 2025 fourth-round draft pick? That wasn’t his college experience.
Walker played five college seasons, two at Southern Arkansas and three at Central Arkansas, small-school programs lacking the cash to entice stud players.
Walker passed on the opportunity to cash in at bigger schools, as well as better position himself for the 2025 NFL Draft.
During a sitdown for Buccaneers.com, Walker explained that he stayed at Central Arkansas for two distinct reasons. And after hearing them, Joe can say there are few guys like Walker walking around the college football landscape.
“I was hard,” Walker said. “I talked to my family about it. The decision was my little brother was coming to [University of Central Arkansas] to play football, and I was like, ‘Man, this will probably be the only chance that I get an opportunity to play with him.’ So I was like, ‘I can leave and go make some money, or I can just stay.’
“And another thing that made me stay was I was 10 sacks and 10 tackles for loss from the all-time record at [Central Arkansas]. So I was like, ‘Man, I could go somewhere and get 8 sacks and maybe get drafted higher, but I can stay here [at Central Arkansas] and be forever cemented. So it was just about that to me.”
What a class move by Walker, who called his college decision a “no-brainer.”
A common attendance at a Central Arkansas football game is 8,000 people. It’s not a place to get noticed, but Walker made sure he did get noticed while staying loyal to his football and real-world families.
Walker is an easy guy to root for, an underdog, and an underdog coming off major knee surgery before ever completing an NFL practice in pads.