Watching that Michigan news about locking down a quarterback for 2027 just makes me shake my head. They’re not recruiting a kid, they’re purchasing a futures contract. It’s all transactions now. I remember when a commitment meant something, when a kid like Quinn Grovey came to Fayetteville because he believed in the program and wanted to build something. Now it’s just the opening bid in a silent auction that never ends. They get him on campus and the first thing his agent is doing is shopping his NIL number to the highest bidder for the next year. There’s no soul left in it.
It’s infected everything. You see Oklahoma State bringing in fifty new fces, Colorado with forty-three. That’s not a football team, that’s a temp agency. What are you even building? There’s no continuity, no legacy, no pride in the jersey. It’s just a uniform of the week. We used to have players who were synonymous with Arkansas football. You thought of Darren McFadden, you thought of the Hogs. You thought of Steve Atwater. Those guys were pillars. Now a pillar is just something you walk past on your way to the next big check. The portal didn’t just open a door, it blew up the whole damn house and now everyone’s just renting by the season.
And don’t tell me it creates parity. It creates mercenaries. Look at Oregon stacking five-stars like they’re playing a video game with cheat codes on. That’s not coaching. That’s just having a bigger bag. It reminds me of the old Southwest Conference days with the slush funds, but at least back then they had to hide it. Now it’s bragged about. The sport has lost its backbone. It’s a shame. The best memories are of teams that grew together, that fought through adversity for years. The 1998 team that shocked everyone, the 2006 squad that no one saw coming. You can’t buy that chemistry. You can’t portal in heart. But they’ll keep trying, and the game I fell in love with forty years ago keeps fading a little more every signing day.