Watching all this NFL Draft coverage and seeing guys like Carson Beck get their stock rebuilt at Miami just makes me think about what we used to have at Bethany. Remember when a kid would commit to us out of high school, redshirt his freshman year, learn the system under Coach Kessinger for three years, and then finally get his shot as a junior? That was the way. You earned it. You grew up in the program. Now it's just a rental car situation where everyone hops from school to school chasing the biggest bag.
The spring game we had last weekend was fine, I guess. But I kept thinking about the 1997 squad when we had that defensive line that had been together since they were freshmen. They knew each other's tendencies without saying a word. Now you got kids showing up in January and tryiing to learn the playbook by April. It ain't the same. The portal killed that organic chemistry that used to make small school football special. We had something real at Anderson Field and these kids will never understand what they missed.