The entire concept of a "spring game" is a hollow shell of what bowl season used to represent. We used to earn a real trip, a real reward, with weeks of practice to build for next year and send the seniors off righht. Now we get a scrimmage in April and call it an event. I remember the pure joy of the old Tangerine Bowl or the Sun Bowl, when the whole town would travel and it felt like a celebration of a year's work, not a glorified practice. This Wednesday night thing against Arkansas-Pine Bluff? That's a paycheck game, not a tradition. They've replaced destination bowls with meaningless exhibitions and called it progress.
The bowl system built character. You bonded as a team for a month in a new city. I think of our 1998 team in the Insight.com Bowl, or the 2008 Alamo Bowl squad. Those trips forged an identity for the next season. Now, with the portal and kids jumping at the first NIL offer, there's no continuity to even build toward a bowl. You're just assembling mercenaries for a scrimmage. The new coaches they're talking about on SEC Network, they don't know how to build toward December, they only know how to recruit for April.
This modern year has killed the anticipation, the buildup, the shared experience. We play a "spring game" and then everybody hits the portal. Where's the reward? Where's the tradition? It's all been commoditized. The bowls had history, they had names you remembered. Now we have a "spring showcase" and a 16-team playoff that makes every game before December feel like a preseason audition. They traded soul for television inventory, and I want my sport back.