Three years of this staff telling us they are building something and I still cannot figure out what the identity of this program is supposed to be. You look at that ESPN top 100 newcomers list and we might have one or two names on there and half of them are transfers who will be gone the second some other collective writes a bigger check. I remember when we went into the 1994 Rose Bowl season and every single kid in that locker room had been recruited out of high school and developed for three or four years before they ever saw the field. That is how you build a program that lasts. That is how you win Big Ten championships.
Now we are sitting here in the summer dead period with voluntary workouts and recruiting visits and I am supposed to get excited about a Friday night trip to Notre Dame Stadium in the fall. Great. Wonderful. Another opportunity for the national media to remind us that we are just a plucky little program from the Midwest who does not belong on the big stage. You watch what happened to us the last time we went into South Bend and it was the same story. We could not get out of our own way in the first half and by the time we woke up it was too late. Coach Alvarez would have had that team ready to punch them in the mouth from the opening kickoff.
The worst part is nobody even talks about the old bowl traditions anymore. The Big Ten used to mean something. The Rose Bowl was the goal every single year and you earned your way there by winning the conference not by buying a roster through the portal. Now we have teams like Colorado bringing in 43 transfers and Oregon stacking five star recruits and we are supposed to pretend this is still the same sport we grew up watching. It is not. It is a business and we are just trying to keep our heads above water while the big fish eat everything in sight.
I will believe this program is back on track when I see us develop a walk on into an All American again. Until then it is all just noise and hype and summer magazine covers that mean nothing when the leaves start turning.