You watch ESPN roll out these Future Power Rankings and I just think about what we used to have here. The 1993 Rose Bowl team didnt have a single transfer on the roster. Those kids from small Wisconsin towns came to Madison because they wanted to be Badgers not because some collective cut them a check for spring ball. Now we are sitting here in June and I cannot even name half the roster without checkng a depth chart that changes every week.
The portal has turned college football into a rental car service. Oklahoma State brought in 50 players. Colorado brought in 43. Fifty transfers is not a football team it is a bus station. Barry Alvarez would have looked at that number and laughed you out of the room. He built the 1994 Rose Bowl team with walk ons and three star kids who stayed four years and bled red and white. Now every spring you have to learn a whole new set of names and half of them will be gone before the leaves change.
I miss when loyalty meant something. When a kid from Waukesha would sit on the bench for two years then earn a starting spot as a junior and you knew he would leave everything on that field. That is gone forever and I am not sure we are better for it.