I'm not sure if it ever reached 200. It allowed them to run more full stations in practice (more reps), plus some guys develop later and they produced a large number of starter-caliber players from their walk-on pool. It helped that a lot of the tiny school districts in the state of Nebraska weren't recruited by any other Div 1 schools too. Nebraska often seemed to have a starting fullback who had been a star at an 8-man football program in western Nebraska.

Bill Callahan found those numbers to be completely unmanageable and drastically scaled back the walk-on program to be mostly recruited walk-ons, more similar to the way Virginia Tech does it.