Gets me about this ESPN 100 days piece and all the talk about Oregon vs Georgia for the CFP favorite? The whole thing is built on quicksand. The portal killed loyalty and nobody wants to admit it. Back in the 1980s when Coach Dooley was roaming the sideline, you recruited a kid, you signed him, and you watched him grow from a freshman who couldn't find the weight room into a senior who could lead the team. That was the whole deal. You earned your spot in the rotation by grinding through August two-a-days in the Georgia heat, not by swiping right on a new NIL deal every time spring practice got hard.
Now look at what we have. Oregon brings in Dylan Raiola from Nebraska and suddenly they are the favorite? That kid is already on his second school and he hasnt even started a full season yet. Dante Moore is sitting right there in the same QB room. One of them is going to hit the portal the second they lose the job and nobody bats an eye. That is not a program. That is a rental car agency. We won a national title in 2021 with guys who had been in Athens for three and four years. They built something together. They knew what it meant to run through the hedges because they had been doing it since they were teenagers.
I look at what Oklahoma State is doing with 50 portal transfers under Eric Morris and I just shake my head. Fifty players. That is not building a team, that is assembling a fantasy roster. Colorado brought in 43 guys and everyone is acting like Deion Sanders reinvented the wheel. You know what that actually is? It is a desperate gamble that ignores everything we used to know about chemistry and culture. The 1992 team that won it all for us did not have a single transfer starter. We had homegrown kids who bled red and black because they had been in the program since day one.
The spring transfer window got eliminated starting this year and that is the best news I have heard in a decade. At least now these kids have to sit with their decision for a full year instead of jumping ship every time the weather changes. But the damage is done. The portal has turned college football into a free agent frenzy and the loyalty that built dynasties is dead. I will die on this hill. Give me a roster full of three-star kids who want to be Dawgs over a roster full of five-star mercenaries any day of the week and twice on Saturday. That is the Georgia way. That is what made us great in the first place.