You sit there and watch ESPN put out these offseason rankings, these award candidate lists for every team in May, and I just shake my head. Back in the 1992 season under Coach Stallings, you did not get preseason hype for individual awards. You earned it on the field in the fourth quarter of a game that mattered. Now they are trying to tell us who is going to take home hardware before the pads even pop in fall camp. That 1992 defense did not care about individual awards. They cared about shutting down Miami in the Sugar Bowl and proving the SEC could hang with anybody. We do not need preseason hype. We need linemen who can hold the point of attack and linebackers who can fill a gap. That is what built this program. Not some ESPN writer in Bristol picking a name out of a hat. I remember when we measured success by the scoreboard in December, not by who got mentioned on a list in May.
The portal heavy offensive line they are piecing together this spring better be ready because the old school way of building a line was about developing for three years, not plugging in a transfer for one season and hoping it works. You look at the 1994 offensive line that opened holes for Sherman Williams and that group had been together since they were freshmen eating together in the cafeteria. They knew each other's tendenies. They could communicate without saying a word. Now we are hoping a group of transfers can learn the snap count by September. That is not how you win championships in this league. The SEC is not going to care about your spring chemistry when you got Georgia and LSU lining up across from you in October. You better have more than portal buzz. You better have fight.
And do not get me started on the NIL and portal killing loyalty. I saw a kid leave a program last year because he was promised a better deal somewhere else. That would not have happened in the 80s. You committed to Alabama and you stayed because you wanted to wear that crimson jersey and run out of that tunnel. You did not need a check to play for the Bear or for Coach Stallings. You played because it meant something. Now it is all about the highest bidder and the quickest path to playing time. The portal has turned college football into free agency and I do not like it one bit. We used to build programs through sweat and discipline. Now we build them through bank accounts and recruiting rankings.
You want to know what matters? It matters that our new offensive line gels before the season starts. It matters that our quarterback can make the right reads when the pocket collapses. It matters that our defense remembers what it means to be Alabama. The rest of this offseason noise is just that. Noise. We will find out in November what this team is made of. That is when the real evaluation happens. Not in May. Not on ESPN. In the fourth quarter of a tight game on the road in the SEC. That is where championships are decided. That has not changed since the 70s and it never wil...