You want to talk about toughness? I will tell you what toughness is. Toughness is not what you see on these Future Power Rankings ESPN puts out where they try to project who has the best rsoter through 2027 based on recruiting stars and transfer portal hauls. Toughness is what I watched in the 1992 Sugar Bowl when we shut down Miami's offense and won the national title. That team did not have a single five-star recruit on the offensive line. They had guys like George Wilson who walked on and John Guy who was a three-star out of high school that Coach Stallings molded into an All-SEC player. They played with a meanness that you cannot measure in any recruiting ranking.
Now you look at this ESPN Future Power Rankings thing and they have us somewhere in the mix. I do not care where they rank us. What I care about is whether the kids in that locker room right now understand what it means to wear the crimson jersey. Back in the early 80s when Coach Bryant was still roaming the sideline, we did not have any of this transfer portal nonsense. You committed to Alabama and you stayed at Alabama. You fought through the August heat in those two-a-days and you earned your spot. The freshmen carried the pads for the upperclassmen. That built character. That built toughness.
I see Oklahoma State bringing in 50 portal transfers and Colorado bringing in 43 and I just shake my head. You cannot buy toughness in the transfer portal. You cannot download it from a recruiting database. Toughness is something that has to be forged in the weight room and on the practice field over years. It is the fourth quarter against LSU in Baton Rouge when the crowd is screaming and your body is broken and you find a way to make one more block. It is what we had in 1994 when we went to the Citrus Bowl and beat Ohio State because our offensive line just wore them down in the second half.
This new NIL revenue-sharing model caps at 20.5 million per school and everybody thinks that is going to create parity. It is just going to shift where the money goes. The kids today have agents and lawyers before they ever take a snap of college football. Back when I was watching, a player was grateful for a scholarship and a meal plan. Now they are negotiating contracts like they are already in the NFL. And do not even get me started on the spring transfer portal window being eliminated. That just means the winter window is going to be even more of a circus.
I will tell you what gives me hope. I watch our offensive line room this spring with all those portal additions and I hear they are grinding in voluntary workouts. That is what I want to hear. I do not care about the star ratings. I care about whether they are willing to put in the work when nobody is watching. The 1992 team had that. The 1979 team had that.