You see ESPN scouting 21 five-star kids who have never taken a college snap and I just think about the 1992 team we had. Coach Stallings built that championship squad around juniors and seniors who had been in the system for three or four years. We didnt need a scouting report on what they could do in practice because we watched them grow up in the program. Now its all about what a 17 year old might become three years down the road if he even stays that long.
The whole system is broken. These kids get anointed before they ever step on campus and then half of them are in the portal before their sophomore year chasing a bigger NIL bag somewhere else. I remember when we won the 1992 Sugar Bowl against Miami and that whole defense had been together for years. They knew each other. They trusted each other. You cannot build that kind of chemistry when you are reshuffling the roster every winter like a deck of cards.
NIL is leveling the playing field they say. What it really did was destroy loyalty and turn college football into free agency every single offseason. We used to measure a program by how many players stayed and developed. Now we measure by how many stars they had on some recruiting website when they were in high school. Its a joke and I will die on that hill.