Three portal losses in one week and I am supposed to believe we are building something sustainable here. I watched the 2005 season when we went 11-1 and every single kid on that roster would have run through a brick wall for the jersey on their chest. Now you cannot even keep a spring practice roster intact without some kid from the transfer portal whispering in their ear about a bigger NIL bag somewhere else. We had a culture back then that was built on loyalty and hard work and knowing that if you stuck it out through the dog days of August in Fort Worth you would be rewarded with something real. Now it is just a rental agreement every single semester and I am tired of pretending otherwise.
The staff is working hard I will give them that much. They are bringing in bodies and trying to plug holes but you cannot build a program when the foundation keeps getting pulled out from under you. I think back to the 1998 Sun Bowl season when we had a group of kids who had been together since their freshman year and you could see it in the way they played. They knew exactly what the man next to them was going to do because they had been through the grind together for years. That kind of chemistry does not come from a December portal shopping spree. It comes from summer workouts and two-a-days and learning to trust each other when things get hard. You cannot buy that with NIL money no matter what these recruuiting services tell you.
And the thing that gets me is we are not even the worst example of this nonsense. You look at Oklahoma State bringing in 50 portal transfers under their new coach and Colorado hauling in 43 guys and tell me that is college football. That is free agency. That is the NFL without the salary cap and the structure. We used to laugh at the pro game for being mercenary and now we have embraced it wholesale. I remember when a commitment meant something. When a kid signed his letter of intent and you knew he was going to be wearing purple for the next four or five years unless he graduated early or went to the NFL. Now you cannot even count on a kid to make it through spring ball without checking the portal.
I will still be here in the fall because that is what you do. But I am not going to pretend this is the same sport I fell in love with back in the 1980s when we ran the wishbone and beat teams with toughness and discipline. The portal has turned loyalty into a relic and I do not see it coming back.