You want to know the real difference between now and when I started watching this program in the late 70s? It's how we built a roster. We used to recruit like we were building a family, not a fantasy football team. Coach would drive down to Grundy or up to Welch on a Tuesday night, sit in a kid's living room, drink coffee with his mama, and talk about what it meant to wear the Big Blues jersey. You earned that jersey. You didn't swipe right on it through the transfer portal because some NIL colletcive offered you a better deal than the school down the road.
I remember the 1984 season when we brought in a kid from Richlands who nobody wanted. No stars next to his name, no recruiting service had him ranked. Coach saw him play in a mud bowl game and offered him a scholarship based on how he carried himself after a loss. That kid started for four years, never missed a practice, and still comes back for homecoming every fall. You don't get that anymore. Now a kid commits to us in June, decommits in December because Oregon's collective threw an extra twenty grand at him, and we're left scrambling to find a warm body for spring practice.
Recruiting the old way meant something. You watched a kid play for two or three years in high school. You knew his coaches, his pastors, his uncles. You knew if he could handle a loss without blaming everybody else. You knew if he'd show up for 6 AM winter workouts when it was 18 degrees outside. That's how you built a program that lasted. Not by throwing money at a transfer who's already been at three schools and will leave the second things get hard.
The 2026 recruiting class is full of five-star kids who've been recruited since eighth grade, and half of them will transfer before their sophomore year. That's not a program. That's a rental agreement. We used to build something permanent. We built men who bled for this school and this town. I'd take one kid from a coal mining town who wanted to be a Big Blue over ten portal mercenaries with highlight tapes and zero loyalty. Every single time.
This whole system is broken. The portal killed the soul of recruiting and NIL turned it into a shopping spree. I'll die on that hill.