Just saw that ESPN newcomer list and the transfer portal numbers are screaming at me again. Colorado brought in 43 transfers this offseason. Oklahoma State brought in 50 under their new coach. FIFTY. That is not building a football program, that is running a fantasy football leauge. This reminds me of when we had to sit through three years of the same guys learning the same system under Coach Dooley before they even sniffed the field. You earned your snaps by knowing the playbook in your sleep, not by swiping right on the next NIL deal.
The spring transfer portal window got eliminated starting this year and thank goodness for that because it was getting impossible to keep track of who was even on the roster from one week to the next. I saw Dylan Raiola go from Nebraska to Oregon and now he is competing with Dante Moore for the starting job. Two five star quarterbacks on the same campus and one of them is going to hit that portal again by August because somebody promised him a bigger bag. That is not how you build a program. That is how you build a hotel lobby where everybody is just passing through.
We lost some good ones to the NFL Draft this week and that is the way it should be. You come in, you work, you develop, you leave when your time is right. But this portal nonsense has turned college football into free agency without the loyalty. Remember when we had guys like David Pollack and Thomas Davis who stayed all four years because they loved the G between the hedges? Now a kid has one bad spring practice and he is gone before the leaves change color.
The NIL revenue sharing model they capped at $20.5 million per school is just going to make everything worse. It turns every position group into a salary cap negotiation. You think Coach Smart enjoys sitting down with a 19 year old offensive lineman and haggling over his market value? That is not college football. That is the NFL with worse uniforms and no pension.
We landed a five star tight end in Kaiden Prothro and I am happy about that but I cannot help wondering how long he will actually stay. If some Oregon collective or Texas booster offers him double next January, what is stopping him from leaving? Nothing. That is what is stopping him. Nothing. The NCAA killed the soul of this sport when they opened that portal and handed out NIL checks like candy at a parade.
Give me the old way every single time. A kid from southwest Georgia who grew up wanting to wear the silver britches and would run through a brick wall for that helmet. Not a hired gun who is shopping his services to the highest bidder every December. I miss when we built something that lasted.