Wait so CBS Sports puts BYU at the top of the Big 12 power rankings after spring ball and I'm supposed to take that seriously? I remember when this conference meant something real. When we lined up against Nebraska in the old Big 12 and you knew you were getting punched in the mouth for 60 minutes. Now we've got a league where the top spot changes hands every other week and nobody stays on top long enough to build a real identity.
You want to know what made TCU football special back in the Gary Patterson years? It wasn't the flashy recruits or the fancy facilities. It was the toughness. We had kids who grew up in Texas dirt who understood that you earn every blade of grass on that field. I remember watching us go into Stillwater back in 2014 and just grind Oklahoma State down with old school defeense. No gimmicks. Just angles and pursuit and gang tackling. That's what I miss.
This league now is all about who can collect the most portal talent in one offseason. Oklahoma State brought in 50 new bodies and people act like that's the future. 50 transfers. That's not building a program, that's renting one. Back in the 1998 season when we won the Sun Bowl against USC, we had kids who had been in the system for three years. They knew the calls in their sleep. They didn't need a spring practice to figure out where the weight room was.
I'll give BYU credit for what they've done. They play hard. But this conference needs someone to plant a flag and stay there. We've got the pieces to do it. The question is whether we still have the mentality to grind it out like the old days or if we're just chasing the same portal circus everyone else is running.