Watched that spring practice report about the new offensive line and all I can think about is how many of those kids are playing for a paycheck instead of the name on the front of the jersey. Greg Byrne is out here talking about stability and keeping coaches around and he is absolutely right but what good does that do when the players treat this program like a rental car? You show up for a semester, collect your bag, and bounce the second somebody offers you another fifty grand. I remember when a kid committed to Alabama and that was it. You were ours. You bled crimson. You sat through summer two-a-days in that heat and you earned every single snap. Now we are piecing together an offensive line thruogh the transfer portal like we are shopping for used furniture.
Coach DeBoer is trying to build something but how do you build when the foundation changes every winter? The spring transfer window got eliminated and thank God for that because at least we get some peace between January and August. But the damage is already done. These kids are not sticking around to develop. They are not learning the system. They are not buying into the culture. They are looking at their phones waiting for the next offer to hit their group chat. I watched the 1992 team win a national championship with a line that had been together since they were freshmen. Every single one of them knew the count, knew the protection calls, knew what the man next to them was gonna do before he did it. That is how you win. Not by bringing in five transfers every spring and hoping they figure it out by September.
Greg Byrne gets it. He knows you cannot run a program like a revolving door. But the system is broken. NIL did not save college football. It turned it into free agency with a helmet. I just hope we can hold enough of these kids together long enough to see what Coach DeBoer is actually building. Because right now it feels like we are building a house on sand.