Just saw ESPN's offseason rankings for every Power 4 team and I had to scroll forever to find us. They probably mentioned our portal haul or whatever but missed the real story. You know what made Wisconsin football special for decades? Walk ons. Kids from Tomahawk and Wausau and random farm towns who showed up uninvited, earned a jersey in fall camp, and became legends.
I remember when we had 15+ walk ons on the two deep for the 1993 season. Guys who grew up dreaming of Camp Randall, not chasing NIL bags from some school they never visited. Jim Leonhard walked on. Mark Tauscher walked on. Chris Chambers walked on. Al Toon walked on. That is Wisconsin football right there. That culture built our program from the ground up.
Now everything is about the transfer portal and recruiting rankings and who has the biggest bag. You do not see kids sticking around for three years to earn a scholarship anymore. They just portal out the second they are not starting. Barry Alvarez would roll over in his grave if he saw what NIL did to the walk on tradition. We used to have tryouts in September where some kid from Medford would lay a hit that made the whole sideline gasp. That is gone now. Replaced by some transfer from a school we never played.