So you want to be a piece of The Rock?

You’ll have to earn it.

And the Slippery Rock University football players do.

SRU is taking on Virginia Union in the NCAA Division II playoffs this weekend. It is The Rock’s third successive trip to the playoffs.

This program has also won back-to-back Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference championships, three consecutive PSAC West crowns and four Western Division titles in the past five years.

And it’s doing so despite doling out maybe half the amount of scholarships that some other PSAC schools in the West Division offer.

How is this happening?

Truth be told, you can’t buy a championship caliber team. But you can develop one.

Many of SRU’s top football players first donned the Green and White for The Rock with no scholarship money at all. Shamar Greene was one of them.

All Greene is going to do is walk out of that school with a degree, a pair of championship rings (at least) and, barring injury, the moniker of the program’s all-time leading rusher.

Oh, yeah, he eventually received scholarship money.

But here was a kid — and there are many others on this team like him — who wanted a chance to play college football and show he belonged with a high-caliber program.

Welcome to Slippery Rock, land of opportunity.

Show up, work hard enough and you can get there.

Look at Brandon Fusco. The former Seneca Valley offensive lineman came to SRU as a smaller sized kid who was hardly recruited at all. He was coached up, built himself up and became an NFL draft pick four years later.

Now he’s making millions of dollars while playing for the first-place Minnesota Vikings.

Obviously, Fusco’s story is a rarity. Football players attaining success through hard work at The Rock is commonplace.

Andrew Huska was a kicker at Concord (W.Va.) who transferred to SRU without The Rock coaches even knowing he was here. He decided to walk on and try out for the team.

Originally a rugby-style punter, the coaches worked with Huska, he practiced hard — and he was recently named first team all-PSAC West as a punter and place-kicker.

Many starters on both sides of the football at SRU received no scholarship money when they first came there.

It’s doubtful that any of them regret that decision.

Slippery Rock has never won a national championship. This weekend marks the program’s first home playoff game in 16 years.

But it is a group of coaches and players who consistently win on the field the old-fashioned way — through hard work, commitment, teamwork, effort and dedication to each other.

Sounds a little cheesy? Maybe.

But these guys were one of just 28 Division II teams in the country still playing football on Saturday.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle