Gets me about all this talk of "top newcomers" and "portal hauls" and "recruiting rankings"? Nobody talks about toughness anymore. Nobody talks about who wants to hit somebody in the mouth on a hot August afternoon when you have been running gassers since January.
I watch these spring practice clips and I see all these transfers running around in shorts and helmets and I wonder how many of them have the kind of grit that Bobby Humphrey had when he carried the ball 30 times against LSU in 1987. That man was beat up, bruised, and he kept running through arm tackles like they were nothing because he had something inside him that these portal kids just do not have.
You cannot buy toughness in the transfer portal. You cannot recruit it from a highlight tape. You develop it in the weight room at 6 AM when Coach Stallings is standing over you and the only thing that matters is whether you finish the rep. That is what built this program and I am afraid we are loisng it.
We ...