Things just keep getting better for Chris Bergin.

The sophomore walkon linebacker from Bloomfield Hills, Mich., got his first career start on Oct. 6 at Michigan State, the team he grew up rooting for, in the stadium he had been to countless Saturdays as a child.

Then, last Saturday against Rutgers, he got his first career sack and made seven tackles, earning himself the defensive player of the week award on Monday.

The 5-foot-11, 213-pounder doesn’t want to say that his reality has outstripped his dreams – he feels that he “was meant to be out there” playing Big Ten football. But it’s pretty close.

Bergin uses the term “surreal” more than once to describe his whirlwind last three weeks as the starting strongside linebacker for a Northwestern team that is still in the hunt for a West division title.

“Deep down you always hope for the highest for yourself, but when it happens to you it’s a lot to take in,” said Bergin shortly after Tuesday morning’s practice in Evanston. “It’s so overwhelming. I don’t know if I can get the words to describe it. It’s been cool and surreal to work so hard and see it pay off.”

Then his voice trails off.

Northwestern has a proud tradition of walkons. Quite a few have become key contributors for the Wildcats over the years. Some turned into stars.

Wide receiver Austin Carr led the Big Ten in catches and yards in 2016 and is now playing for the New Orleans Saints. Barry Gardner followed Pat Fitzgerald as NU’s middle linebacker in the late ‘90s and had an eight-year NFL career.

Still, last week may have been one of the high points in Northwestern walkon history. All three players of the week were walkons: senior running back Chad Hanoaka got the offensive honor after running for 26 yards on six carries, the defensive honor went to Chris Bergin, and the special teams honor went to Chris’s older brother, Joe, who earned it without showing up on the stat sheet.

On top of that, walkon kicker Drew Luckenbaugh also kicked a field goal.

“The walkons are playing their rear ends off and I’m proud of all those guys, what they do and how they carry themselves,” said head coach Pat Fitzgerald during Monday’s press conference.

“You go back in my 13 years (as head coach), and under (coaches) (Randy) Walk(er) and Gary (Barnett), there have been some unbelievable walkons in this program that have been incredibly, incredibly productive. And then there’s so many guys maybe you don’t hear about on the stat sheet on Saturdays that make a huge impact on our team. Chris, Joe and Chad is a short list of an incredibly long list of guys.”

Many walkons play key roles, but Chris Bergin is the only one among the starting 22. He got his first extended playing time in the second half of the Michigan game, after starting OLB Nate Hall went down with a lower-body injury.

He hasn’t looked back.

“I think Chris has been outstanding,” said Fitzgerald. “I don’t think Chris would have expected this type of role at the beginning part of the season. And the Bergin brothers bring it every day. You ask anybody in our program. …They’re a joy and a privilege to coach.”

You couldn’t have scripted a better debut as a starter than the one Chris Bergin got at Spartan Stadium.

This was Michigan State, after all. He had been a Spartan fan for as long as he could remember, bleeding Green & White. His father, Joe, who had played defensive tackle at MSU for George Perles and was a member of the Spartans’ 1987 Rose Bowl team, was in the stands with family and friends.

Yet Michigan State was also the school that didn’t recruit Bergin out of Detroit Country Day School two years ago. So there was also a little bit of a chip on Bergin’s shoulder that day, a desire to show the Spartans coaching staff what they had missed out on.

As linebackers coach Tim McGarigle told Bergin before the game, “Even Hollywood wouldn’t buy that story.”

Bergin uses that word again to describe his emotions.

“Surreal would be an understatement,” he says. “That was something out of a movie, almost… I grew up a Michigan State fan but they never recruited me. So to have an opportunity to play against them in the stadium I grew up with. It was unbelievable.”

Just like in the movies, Bergin got a Hollywood ending. He registered eight tackles, second-most on the team, and a quarterback hurry as the Wildcats upset the No. 20 Spartans, 29-19.

His older brother Joe also made a tackle on special teams during the game. Both of them got to sing the Northwestern fight song in the stadium in which they’d sung Michigan State’s so many times before.

And his father, up in the stands? Who was the ex-Spartan rooting for?

Chris says that Joe Sr. was wearing purple that day, not green.

“He’s a die-hard Cat,” says Bergin. “He may have been a starter on the Rose Bowl team, but he supports us in everything that we do.”

Bergin chose the path of a walkon. He had been recruited by several schools at Country Day, including, for a time, Northwestern, who was interested in him as a safety. His 10 eventual Division I scholarship offers included Ivy League and MAC schools, and all three service academies.

Yet he turned them all down for a chance to play for free at Northwestern.

Bergin hadn’t planned on it. He was intent on taking one of those scholarship offers and hadn’t even considered walking on until he visited NU almost on a whim the weekend before signing day.

“I took a bunch of visits to the schools that offered me. When I took those visits I was hoping for clarity,” he said. “But they never really felt like home. I went to Air Force, Princeton, Eastern Michigan, Kent State, but none of them really felt like home.”

In early February, after several fruitless visits, Joe, who was then in his second year at Northwestern, convinced his younger brother to come to Evanston to check things out.

“It was love at first sight,” said Bergin. He went to a 5 a.m. team workout and immediately felt like one of the guys. “I felt like this was the place for me.”

But there was a catch: he had to let go of his ego. Bergin wouldn’t be a scholarship football player at a lower level school, a big fish in a small pond; he would instead be a walkon at a Big Ten school, a small fish in a big pond.

“I wanted to play in the Big Ten as long as I had been playing football,” he said. “Being a walkon was the only way to do that, so I had to swallow my pride.”

It was worth it, according to Bergin.

“It was the best decision I ever made in my life.”

One might think that there would be a natural competition between two brothers, two years apart, who are both walkon football players at the same school. There are so many things the two could battle about: game time, reps, tackles, you name it.

Both Bergins were special teams standouts last season, but this year Chris has separated himself by getting defensive snaps and starts.

This is the second time the two Bergin boys – a “Bergin burger” as Fitzgerald calls it – played together on a football team. The first time was at Country Day, when Joe was the senior captain and Chris a sophomore.

While Chris admits that the two have been “in a rivalry since we were born, scrapping and clawing,” the squabbling does not extend to football. The two are only supportive for each other on the field.

“We want each other to succeed in any capacity,” explains Chris. “I love seeing him play and he loves seeing me play.

“I’m his biggest fan and he’s my biggest fan. I guess that’s the best way to put it.”

Like many other walkons, Bergin was missing a little something out of high school, says Fitzgerald. That was the reason he didn’t earn a scholarship offer from the Wildcats.

“I think there’s always great stories like that throughout the country, where guys emerge that were maybe a little bit of this or a little bit of that coming out of high school and maybe the scholarship door wasn’t open for them coming in,” he said. “But the opportunity door is open as far as a roster position as an opportunity to walk on. All our walkons are preferred walkons.”

Bergin played primarily running back and safety at Country Day, a team he led to a 13-1 record and a state runner-up finish his senior year.

At 5-foot-11, Bergin was a little short for outside linebacker. His best time in the 100 meters was 11.54, probably a tick slow for a Big Ten safety prospect.

Bergin was on the radar for Northwestern, but when A-list safeties Austin Hiller, Bryce Jackson and J.R. Pace all committed, he was left without a scholarship slot.

Communication between Bergin and NU stopped at that point. But when he decided to go the walkon route, Northwestern’s coaches welcomed him with open arms.

Ironically, Bergin’s father Joe, the former Spartan who is now a real estate broker, was all for seeing Chris follow his older brother to a Big Ten rival school.

“He really buys into the whole ‘4-40’ rule (four years for the next 40 years of your life),” said Chris. “Coming here was a no-brainer.”

Bergin hasn’t only accepted the role of walkon. He has made it a part of who he is.

“To me, as a walkon, it’s not just about paying for school,” he said. “It’s a mindset and a mentality you carry, and it’s why I’ve had success so far. We expect nothing and have to earn everything.”

He continued, “We work hard every day, whether it’s on game day or on scout team during the week to give the team a good look… We strive for excellence and we take a lot of pride in what we do.”

Fitzgerald agrees, saying at every opportunity that his walkons are special players. “They are ridiculous people,” he said – and he means that only in the best possible way – and envisions them as future CEOs, doctors, lawyers and leaders.

Walkons, as you might imagine, don’t get satisfied, either. Despite already achieving as a sophomore just about everything a walkon could hope for in a career, Bergin is just getting started. He ranks fifth on the team with 35 tackles.

He acknowledges that there is still a lot of room for improvement, but he’s gaining confidence with every rep.

In other words, the best is yet to come.

“I feel like I’m starting to come into my own,” he says. “I’m getting better week to week. I’m just going to continue to work hard and we’ll see what happens.”

He may be a starter now, but Bergin still thinks like a walkon.