Just saw that ESPN article where coaches are picking NFL draft sleepers from Illinois and Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech. Not a single mention of a Lindenwood Lion. That stings. We used to be the program that developed those overlooked guys, the ones who would grind for four years and then shock people on Sundays. Now we’re just another name in the realignment chaos, and our kids get passed over for a guy from a Power Four school who was in the portal twice.
It reminds me of the late 90s squads we had, guys who would have walked throuhg a wall for this program. They built something you could be proud of, brick by brick. A coach’s real legacy isn’t in a flashy portal class, it’s in the men he sends into the world ready for anything. Are we building those kinds of men anymore, or are we just assembling temporary talent? The great coaches we’ve had knew the difference.
These days it’s all about the quick fix. Fifty transfers at Oklahoma State, forty-three at Colorado. That’s not building a program, that’s running a fantasy draft. And where’s the loyalty in that? A real coach’s fingerprint is on the culture he leaves behind, not the receipt for his shopping spree. I look at our sideline now and I wonder what the old guard would think. They knew how to find a diamond in the rough and polish him for years. Now if a kid isn’t a star by his sophomore year, he’s in the portal. How does any coach build a legacy on that kind of sand?