Three years. THREE YEARS since they changed the transfer rules and we still cannot get a handle on this nonsense. I'm sitting here watching the NFL Draft seeing our guys like Mansoor Delane and Garrett Nussmeier and Harold Perkins Jr. get their names called and I'm proud of them, I really am. But then I flip over to the spring practice reports and see Colorado trotting out 43 new faces and Oklahoma State bringing in 50 portal transfers and I just want to turn the TV off. What are we even doing anymore?
This is not how you build a progarm. I remember when Coach Nick Saban was at LSU in the early 2000s and he'd recruit a kid from Louisiana, redshirt him, develop him for three years, and by his junior season that kid would be a starter who knew every assignment and loved this university like it was his own blood. You cannot buy that. You cannot download that from a portal database. You have to earn it in the weight room at 5 AM in August when the humidity is thick enough to drink and nobody is watching.
Look at our spring game. We had some good moments, don't get me wrong. But I watched kids who have been here for one semester trying to figure out the defensive signals and I thought back to the 2007 team. Glenn Dorsey. Jacob Hester. Matt Flynn. Those boys played together for years. They knew what the other guy was going to do before he did it. That is not something you get from a 43-man portal class, no matter how much NIL money you throw at it.
And now they eliminated the spring portal window starting this year. Great. So all these kids who committed to a school last winter are going to sit through spring practice, realize they aren't starting, and what? They have to wait until December to leave? That is not going to stop anything. They will just mail it in for the fall and transfer the first chance they get.
The SEC had 87 players drafted this year. Record numbers. And I am supposed to be impressed. But I look at that list and I wonder how many of those guys started their careers at one school and finished at another. The loyalty is gone. The tradition is gone. We used to build dynasties on culture and development. Now we build rosters on who has the best NIL collective and who can promise the most playing time in a sales pitch.
I miss when it meant something to put on that purple and gold. When you stayed because you loved this place, not because your agent told you the offer was competitive.