Just saw that ESPN piece breaking down where every 2027 five-star fits and I had to put the phone down for a minute. Twenty one kids who have never taken a college snap and we are already deciding which program they belong to. This is what NIL and the portal have done to us. We used to build teams over years, not assemble them like fantasy rosters in the spring.
I think about the 1992 defense that won us a national title. Guys like Antonio Langham and Sam Shade did not come in as five-star superstars with marketing campaigns. They came in as freshmen, sat behind upperclassmen, learned the system under Coach Stallings, and earned their stripes. By the time they were juniors and seniors they knew the defense better than the coaches did. That is how you build a program. That is how you develop loyalty.
Now we have kids committing to three different schools before they ever enroll. The portal has turned college football into a rental car service. You keep a kid for a year, maybe two, and then he is off to the highest bidder. I saw Oklahoma State brought in 50 transfers this offseason. Fifty. That is not building a program. That is throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks.
And do not get me started on what this does to the walk-on program. I remember when we had walk-ons who would bleed crimon for four years just to get a chance to carry the water on game day. Guys who would run scout team with more passion than the starters ran the real offense. That is gone now. Why would a kid walk on when he can portal somewhere and get a bag of money?
The NIL revenue sharing model they are talking about with the 20.5 million cap is just going to make everything worse. It formalizes the pay-for-play system that has always been under the table but now it is out in the open. We used to win because we outworked everybody. Now it is about who has the biggest checkbook.
I know I sound like an old man yelling at the clouds. But I watched this program win championships with kids who stayed four years and graduated. Kids who came back for alumni weekends and brought their kids to see the stadium. That is gone. We are just a farm system for the NFL now and the portal is the combine.