Husker Walk-on Q-n-A: Todd Honas

Todd Honas is a junior walk-on receiver from Aurora who has looked to former Nebraska defensive tackle Kenny Walker for motivation and inspiration. That's because Honas and Walker, who finished his career in 1990, are both deaf. Honas, whose mother is also deaf, hasn't let his impairment affect him on the football field, as he has played primarily on special teams, while also seeing game action last season at wide receiver against Wisconsin and Illinois. In the classroom, he's a two-time academic All-Big Ten selection and has made the Nebraska Scholar-Athlete Honor Roll four times. Last year, Honas received a Sam Foltz Hero 27 Leadership Award, and he is a three-time member of the Brook Berringer Citizenship Team. Honas visited with Brian Rosenthal for this week's walk-on Q-n-A on Huskers.com.
 
BR: Why did you choose to walk-on at Nebraska?
Todd: "I came to the spring game when I was senior in high school, and Patrick O'Brien, that was his first year here, and his first spring game. I remember when he walked out, it was late in the game, third or fourth quarter, and everybody just erupted. That was for a spring game. I never knew that. I was kind of in my shell at Aurora and kind of followed other college teams, but never knew that 90,000 people showed up for spring games. I looked at that and said how this state really gets behind this team 100 percent. I was completely unaware of how passionate our fan base is. That's probably the biggest reason I came here.
 
"Another one was because of Kenny Walker. Kenny was my role model growing up, and when I started playing football, he was one of the guys I looked up to. He's a lot older, but he wrote a book, and my mom gave it to me when I was in the fifth or sixth grade, and I always had that book. I read that, and that was my motivation. Somebody has done it before I have, that was deaf and played football. Then I came here, and I had no idea he was an All-American. I go by the wall out here and he's on the All-American wall, and I'm like, 'Wow, that's really motivating to me.' "
 
BR: Did you have other opportunities to play football?
Todd: "Yeah, Yale was my best offer, an Ivy League school. Really, I just had the local teams, South Dakota, South Dakota State, Northwest Missouri, (Nebraska)-Kearney. Wyoming wanted me to walk-on out there. Yale was kind of the odd one. But I wanted to give this a shot."
 
BR: How do you best communicate, and how have you overcome your hearing impairment to play football?
Todd: "I read lips. I can feel the vibrations of you speaking but I can't make out the words. On the football field, I've never heard a whistle. I don't know what a whistle sounds like. I go off the ball. I go off body movement when I know when to stop a play. Sometimes I don't know when to stop, so I keep going, and that's a struggle. We signal in all of our plays, so that's another sign language for me. I'm fluent in sign language, and I had to learn English, too. I'm bilingual."
 
BR: How effective are your hearing aids? Do they help?
Todd: "The left one helps. This is probably my better ear. Hearing loss, you don't go by percentages, you go by decibels, and 120 is profoundly deaf. I have about 80 in my left year that I've lost, so I still have a good amount. You take an audiology test every year if you're hearing impaired, so I took the last one, and I'm losing all the hearing in my right ear. This (right) one's at 110, so it's almost done. But this (left) one's the one I rely on a lot. I'm always leaning this way.
 
"When I get done playing football, I have to get a cochlear implant. I can't do that while I'm playing football. I've done a lot of research on that. They said you have to relearn how to hear things. Like right now, I can't hear any background noise, so if someone talks to me from behind, or something's going on behind, I can't hear that. Or like in a gymnasium. And I've never heard the crowd. But with a cochlear implant, you can. But I can't hear any of that right now. I remember my first summer here, we were lining up, doing 50-yard sprints. I went off and started sprinting, and they blew the whistle behind me, blowing it, blowing it, blowing it, and I ran all way down to the other end. I thought I was so fast. I was the first one down there."
 
BR: Are you related to Will Honas?
Todd: "Yep, he's my cousin. My dad's side of the family is huge. We saw each other at weddings and family stuff growing up, but when he was getting recruited, that's really when we got in touch. We ended up living together, and we still do. Our family's gotten a lot closer because of that. They're always at tailgates together. I think it's really cool. Our entire family is from the western Kansas area, Ellis. Then his family went south (to Wichita) and my family went north (to Aurora). I was about 4 or 5. This is my home."
 
BR: How do you balance football and school to earn the academic accolades you have received?
Todd: "Every college athlete has to do that, but really it comes down to it is a time commitment. You've got to be able to not only know how to use your time wisely but you've got to be productive in that amount of time. I think everybody knows that. You have 10 minutes, 20 minutes, be as productive as you can. That's how I do it. I go 20 minutes at a time and I hang it up. Just have to balance it."
 
BR: What's it mean to you to be a part of the Nebraska walk-on tradition?
Todd: "It means everything. I look up to other walk-ons on my team. They don't even know that, but I've watched them work every single day, and it inspires me to work hard. Guy right there. Jeremiah Stovall. I can look around. There's Eli (Sullivan) right there. I mean, I can just look around and see other guys like me who came in and walked on, no scholarship, had a chip on their shoulder and went as hard as they possibly can. I get my energy from Kenny and that stuff, but then seeing guys like them work hard, that inspires me as well."
 
BR: What do you remember about your first time playing in a game?
Todd: "Last year, the Troy game, second game. I just remember being so excited. The thing that people never tell you about playing is how fast it goes. I mean, you're out there and you spend all week getting prepared for these situations, and you get in a game and it's literally (snaps fingers) 3 seconds, and you're done, you're out. You have to be ready for those 3 seconds and do it perfect."
 
BR: What's your ultimate goal as a walk-on?
Todd: "I've played. That was my biggest goal, was to play and letter here, and I was able to do that last year. Now it's at the point where my goals aren't really for me anymore. I did what I wanted to do coming here. Now my goals are like I want us to win the West, I want us to go to Indianapolis and win a championship and get this thing going as high up as we can, as fast as we can."
 
BR: I've heard you have aspirations of being a coach. What notes are you taking here, and are there things you can learn and take with you?
Todd: "Just being around here, actually, when Coach Frost came here, I spent a lot of time learning the offense, because there's so much history behind the offense, and he's taken that, he's got some old stuff from Nebraska, and he's innovated that. I looked at that, and I just got really, really interested in that. Still to this day I love it. I could sit there all day long and look at the Xs and Os schemes. The thing about coaching is, a lot of people love it. It's a really saturated market. Everyone wants to do it. But I really like it, too."
 
BR: How do the walk-ons fit in with the rest of the team?
Todd: "I think the culture here is great. I think every walk-on, you've got to earn your stripes, earn your respect from everybody else, but I think when you put the pads on, you can't even tell who's a walk-on and who's not. In terms of locker room, it takes time to get to know the guys, but all-in-all, I think this team is cohesive and does really well together."
 
BR: What's the biggest piece of advice you've taken from Coach Frost?
Todd: "There's a lot. One of the things I remember he says is if you're ever in like a dangerous situation, you've always made up your mind what you're going to do in that situation before it comes up. He's always said that. Any time in life, have your mind made up what you're going to do in that situation before it ever comes, so that way when you're in it, you don't have to think. You just act."
 
Reach Brian at brosenthal@huskers.com or follow him on Twitter @GBRosenthal.