You watch these ESPN offseason rankings and they are grading us on portal hauls and recruiting stars and I just keep coming back to the 2002 SEC Championship team. That squad did not have a single transfer starter on it. Every man in that huddle earned his stripes through winter workouts in January, not through a recruiting website in May. We had guys like Boss Bailey and Jon Stinchcomb who stayed four years and built something real. Now they want to tell me our offseason grade depends on how many kids we bought from other programs in a 30-day window.
This new NIL revenue sharing model they are talking about at $20.5 million per school just makes me sick. Back in the 90s under Coach Goff we built this program with walk ons from south Georgia and junior college kids who wanted to prove something. Now it is all about who can write the biggest check and who can flip a kid from a commitment three weeks before signing day. The portal killed the whole concept of building a program. You used to watch a kid develop from a freshman special teams contributor to a senior captain and that meant something.
I see Florida State and us canceling that home and home series for 2027 and 2028 and that is exactly what is wrong with this sport. Used to be you scheduled games based on tradition and rivalry and what was good for the game. Now it is all about the nine game league schedule and TV contracts and prrotecting your playoff path. We are losing everything that made Saturday afternoons special. The toughness and grit that defined Georgia football for decades is being replaced by transaction based loyalty and I do not know how we get it back.