Grace McWhorter raving about the defense and the run game improvements on ESPN and I just sat there thinking about something we have lost in this modern era. She is not wrong about what needs fixing but the way we are going about it just does not sit right with me. You look at this roster now and half the offensive line came from some other program. We used to build linemen in house. I remember the 1993 offensive line that paved the way for Sherman Williams and that group had guys who sat on the bench for two years learning the system before they ever saw the field. Now we just go shopping in the portal every December like we are at the grocery store.
Coach Stallings would have looked at a portal and laughed you out of his office. He believed in development. He believed in taking a raw freshman and turning him into a senior captain. That is how we won the 1992 national championship. That defense did not have a single transfer starter. Every single one of those boys came to Tuscaloosa as a freshman and earned their stripes the hard way. Now we got kids coming in for spring practice who have never even been in the weight room with our strength coach. How do you build trust that way? How do you build chemistry?
I am not saying DeBoer is wrong for using the system the way it exists now. You have to adapt or you get left behind. I get that. But watching Saban on Finebaum talking about walking out at that Morgan Wallen concert and reflecting on all the changes he would make to college sports just reminded me how far we have drifted. Coach Saban himself said the portal and NIL have created a situation where loyalty is dead. And he is the one who mastered the system better than anybody. If he is saying it is broken then it is broken.
The SEC is not even the same conference anymorre. We got Texas and Oklahoma in the league now and I still cannot wrap my head around it. The 1995 Alabama team that went to the Citrus Bowl played a schedule that made sense. You knew every stadium. You knew the rivalries. Now we are flying to Seattle to play Washington or whatever nonsense realignment cooked up next. The game is faster and the players are bigger but something important got lost along the way. I will take a team of homegrown seniors who bleed crimson over a roster full of mercenaries any day of the week. That is just how we were raised around here.