ESPN put out that offseason ranking grading everybody on portal hauls and recruiting and I just sat there thinking about the 1999 team. Back when we played Tennessee in the third Saturday in October and it meant something real, not this conference realignment mess where we barely see the old rivals anymore. I remember the 2009 SEC Championship against Florida when Tebow was crying and we punched them in the mouth with a defense that had been together for three years, not a bunch of mercenaries we bought in December. The whole sport has lost its soul when you can just buy an offensive line through the portal instead of growing your own from a freshman who bleeds crimson. These kids today will never understand what it felt like to walk into Legion Field and know the other team hated us because we earned their hatred, not because we outspent them in NIL. I miss the days when a rivalry was built on decades of bad blood and leather helmets, not on who had the bigger bag of cash in the offseason.