You listen to Kirby Smart on Finebaum talking about these massive football budgets threatening Olympic sports and I just think back to the 1980 season when Coach Dooley ran this program on a fraction of what these sschools are spending now and we still went 12-0 and beat Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl. That 1980 team had walk-ons starting on the offensive line and we did not need 50 million dollars in NIL collectives to win a national championship. Now you got Oklahoma State bringing in 50 transfers like they are shopping at a grocery store and Colorado stacking 43 portal guys and Kirby is sitting there telling the truth that this spending spree is going to kill everything else the university offers.
The NIL era has turned college football into a bidding war and I hate every second of it. Back in my day you committed to a school because of the tradition and the coaching staff and the chance to run between the hedges not because some collective offered you a better car deal. Jere Morehead is absolutely right about anarchy because that is exactly what we have right now. You cannot build a program when half your roster changes every December. Kirby knows it and the rest of these coaches know it too they just will not say it out loud because they are scared of getting left behind in the arms race.