Herschel Walker strikes Heisman pose during his long-delayed UGA graduation

ATHENS — Before the convocation ceremony began at the University of Georgia, two graduates realized a legendary athlete was one of their peers.

“Did you see Herschel Walker is graduating with us?” one asked.

“Wait, what?” was the startled response.

More than four decades after the greatest football player in UGA history — and arguably the greatest college football player of all time — left school early to play professionally, he returned to finish what he started.

Walker was called to the stage to receive his undergraduate degree Thursday with others in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences. Friday, he sat among the graduates at the university-wide commencement ceremony in front of a near capacity crowd of roughly 10,000.

“I’m going to do the Heisman pose,” Walker told a group of his classmates, who laughed with him as they waited in line to hear their names called at Thursday’s smaller event, confined to graduates of the College of Family and Consumer Sciences.

Walker struck the pose on stage in front of a barking and cheering crowd.

At Friday’s ceremony, Walker’s presence was less conspicuous, though some of his fellow graduates waved their arms to catch the attention of the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner.

Walker, who was first admitted to UGA in 1980, needed five semesters to graduate. He finished his studies as a Housing Management and Policy major.

“He came in wanting to learn,” said UGA Assistant Athletic Director of Academics Cory Kopaniasz. “He thrives on feeding his brain.”

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Kopaniasz said Walker embraced classwork. Some of his courses were in-person. But many classes, Kopaniasz said, “have texts and assignments on different online platforms, so he had to get caught up to speed on the technology that professors are using in the classroom these days.”

The Georgia Bulldogs won a national championship when Walker was at Georgia. He led the team to a 33-3 record and three Southeastern Conference titles in his three seasons. During that time, his mythical status ballooned as he also starred in track and field. He spent 15 years playing in the USFL and NFL. In 1992, in the latter part of his football career, he competed in the Winter Olympics as a member of the United States bobsled team. Later, he competed in sanctioned mixed martial arts fights.

In 2022, he ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate but was unsuccessful, losing to incumbent Raphael Warnock. Walker was accused of stating falsehoods during his campaign, including a claim that he graduated from UGA with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. He was forced to delete the assertion from his website.

“He’s a role model and a lot of people really love Herschel, so he just had some unfinished business that he felt like he needed to do,” said Daryll Jones, Walker’s teammate at Georgia who remains a close friend.

During his first time around at UGA, Walker couldn’t escape attention.

“He wasn’t a regular student,” Jones said. “He wasn’t a regular student-athlete. He wasn’t a regular anything. There’s no other way to express except that he was a rock star.”

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Kopaniasz said his department frequently works with athletes who intend to complete degrees during or after their professional careers. He said Asher Allen, who played for the Bulldogs from 2006 to 2008, recently graduated, and former stars Brock Bowers and Nakobe Dean, both currently in the NFL, have talked to him about finishing, too.

Still, Walker’s case was unique because of the number of years that had passed. UGA had to convert his transcript from the quarter system hours used at the time he was a student to semester hours.

Walker took two online classes during a summer semester to get started. Then, he moved back to Athens and attended courses on campus. Jones said, as much as was possible, Walker wanted to be “a normal student.”

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Kopaniasz said classmates often asked him to join them on the weekends downtown for drinks at bars.

“Herschel doesn’t drink, but he said he was happy to eat pizza with them,” Kopaniasz said. “He made a lot of connections with players on the (football) team now and regular students.”

Before Thursday’s ceremony, on campus at Mahler Hall, Herschel posed for photos with dozens of his classmates — and some of their parents and grandparents. One student talked with Herschel about a project they worked on in a class together. Then, the more than 100 College of Family and Consumer Sciences graduates gathered for a group photo.

“This is honestly an eye-opening moment to see an icon like this here,” said Noah Reyna, a financial planning major from Canton. “I just kept saying, ‘Look at this, I’m graduating with Herschel Walker.’”