Just saw that ESPN piece about big-budget spending being unsustainable and I had to laugh. You know what was sustainable? Back in the 1990s when Barry Alvarez took a bunch of Wisconsin kids who grew up milking cows and turned them into three Rose Bowl champions. We did not need a $20 million payroll to beat UCLA in Pasadena. We needed a fullback who could block and a linebacker who could read a guard pull.
Now I am reading that Colorado brought in 43 transfers and Oklahoma State grabbed 50. FIFTY. That is not building a program. That is running a fantasy football league where you just plug in new names every year. Coach Alvarez would have looked at that and said what the heck are we doing here. You cannot teach culture to a guy who shows up in June and leaves in December because somebody offered him aonther thousand bucks.
The worst part is seeing what it has done to the Big Ten. We used to have rivalries built on decades of hate and respect. Minnesota and us playing for Paul Bunyan's Axe meant something because those kids grew up together. They knew each other from high school. Now it is just a bunch of mercenaries running around in different jerseys every season. I saw where Indiana is hunting portal replacements after their title run. That is what we have become. You win a national championship and half your roster leaves because the NFL or a bigger NIL bag calls.
And these coaches at the Big Ten meetings lobbying for a 24-team playoff? Of course they want that. More games mean more chances for their transfer-heavy rosters to get exposed. Back in the 1998 season when we went to the Rose Bowl, we earned that spot by beating Ohio State and Iowa on the field. We did not need a participation bracket to get there.
I miss when you could name every starter on the team and they stayed for four years. Now I need a program just to track who is still on the roster from spring practice to fall camp. The game is faster and flashier but it lost its soul somewhere along the way.