You watch Texas Tech lose their starting QB to a gambling problem and you wonder what this sport has become. Back in the 80s we had guys who couldnt afford to lose their meal money much less gamble on games. Now theres so much cash floating around these kids dont know what to do with themselves. NIL created this mess and the portal just makes it worse because if things get uncomfortable you just pack up and leave. We brought in 50 new faces this spring and I cant tell you if any of them will ...
That CBS Sports mock draft with a Cowboy in the top 10 just reminds me of the Les Miles years when we'd produce a few pros but never had that kind of draft buzz. We built those teams with junior college transfers and raw kids from Texas who stuck around for three years and learned what it meant to wear the orange. Now we are supposed to get excited about fifty portal guys and a first round pick from a roster that barely knows each other's names. Coach Miles would have laughed at the idea of b...
Fifty portal guys in one offseeason and we are supposed to pretend this is still Oklahoma State football. I remember when we took on Nebraska in 1994 and every man in that locker room had been through three years of winter conditioning together. Now we are just assembling a fantasy roster and hoping it works. The Bedlam rivalry used to mean something because both sides had homegrown kids who hated each other. This new model is not football, it is just a transaction.
Watching this NFL draft coverage and seeing all these names come off the board just makes me think about the 1987 team we had. We built that squad with high school kids who stuck around for four or five years and learned how to play together. Now we're bringing in 50 transfers like we're building a fantasy roster. You cannot manufacture chemistry in one spring practice. It took Gundy years to build that culture and now we're just hoping a bunch of mercenaries figure it out by September.
Gets me about this 50-man portal overhaul Eric Morris is running? We used to build this program the right way. I remember when we'd find a raw kid from a Texas 2A school, coach him up for three years, and watch him become a man. That's how you build loyalty. That's how you get a guy to run through a wall for Stillwater. Now we're just collecting mercenaries who'll bolt the second a bigger NIL bag shows up. Call me old-fashioned but I'd rather have 22 guys who grew up together th...
All this talk about the 2026 draft just reminds me of the kind of men we used to produce. We had guys who played hurt, who fought for every inch, who built their toughness in Stillwater over four years. Now we're trying to build a team with fifty strangers who have no idea what it means to wear that helmet. You can't buy grit in the portal, you have to forge it together.
Just saw that ESPN draft predictor nonsense and it just reminds me how far we've strayed from real football. All these kids are just prepping for their combine numbers. Nobody is talking about the beauty of a well-executed option play anymore. That was football. You had to read the defense, make a deicsion in a split second, and trust the guy next to you. It built character and toughness.
I think about our 1988 team with Mike Gundy at quarterback. That was a team that understood assignment football. The triple option wasn't about flash, it was about discipline and wearing a defense down for four quarters. You didn't need a five-star athlete at every skill position, you needed smart, tough kids who knew their job. That's how you built a program that could punch above its weight.
Now it's all about these spread offenses with a million transfers who've never played together. How do you install an option package with 50 new faces? You can't. There's no continuity, no trust. The portal and NIL have created a mercenary culture where complex, team-oriented football is dying. They'd rather have a quarterback throw 50 times a game into coverage than grind out a 12-play drive where every player touches the ball. It's a shame.
This 50-man portal circus makes me miss the walk-ons who built our identity. Guys like that would have bled for the brand, not just shopped for the best NIL deal.
All this draft talk and mock drafts and Mel Kiper pontificating just makes me think about what we’ve lost. They’re all sitting there in their studios talking about “development” and “NFL pipelines” like it’s some new concept. We were doing that when Lewis Field still had the grass sidelines and the south end zone was a hill. The pipeline wasn’t a sales pitch, it was a result. It was what happened when a kid came in as a freshman, sat in the stands for the Nebraska game in ’88 and felt the place shake, and spent four years building something with the guys in his locker. You didn’t develop for the league, you developed for the guy next to you, and the league was a byproduct. Now it’s just a transaction. A line on a recruiting brochure. They’ve commoditized the very soul of the thing.
I think about the sounds that are gone. The specific, deafening roar when Thurman Thomas would break through the line and hit the second level. It wasn’t a generic cheer. It was a collective gasp that turned into a tidal wave of noise that started in the old orange seats and rolled all the way up to the press box. You could feel the concrete vibrate. You knew everyone in that stadium, from the students in the east stands to the old farmers in the west, had just seen the same thing and were connected by it. What sound does a portal transfer make when he scores? The same generic applause as anywhere else. There’s no history in it. No shared struggle. It’s just a highlight for his personal reel.
The smells, for heaven’s sake. The mix of popcorn, stale beer, and crisp fall air in October. The scent of charcoal from the tailgates in the gravel lots that used to surround the stadium, lots that are now fancy buildings. The stadium itself used to have a smell, like old concrete and anticipation. Now it’s just a sanitized, corporate venue. They polished the character right out of it. They took down the old signs, expanded the suites, and made it look like every other stadium in the Big 12, or whatever we’re calling this fractured league now. They traded atmosphere for amenities, and they lost the magic.
The new kids will never know what it was to watch a player grow. To see a raw, skinny kid from Texas take his first snap, make his first big mistake, and then, three years later, will the team to a win over Oklahoma in Bedlam right on that field. That story unfolded in front of us, season by season, game by game. It was a novel we all read together. Now? You get a transfer’s highlight tape from his old school. He plays a season. Maybe he’s great. Then he’s gone, off to the next paycheck or the next draft projection. It’s a short story, and a forgettable one. There’s no weight to it. The stadium used to hold the weight of all those stories, all those careers. It felt heavy with tradition. Now it just feels like a temporary rental space.
All these spring game previews just makes me miss the old bowl trips. We used to earn a week in San Antonio for the Alamo Bowl or a holiday in Phoenix, and the seniors got that final reward together. Now with this 50-man portal circus, half the roster that gets you to a bowl won't even be there to play in it. The reward is gone.
Fifty new faces in the locker room and they expect us to build a team. This isn't football, it's a fantasy draft. We used to have leaders who grew up here, like Thurman Thomas, not mercenaries on one-year deals.
Just saw that Oregon class with five five-stars. That's not recruiting, that's just writing checks. We used to find diamonds in the rough like Barry Sanders, not just outbid everybody. This whole sport is becoming a bidding war with a game attached.
They're calling this a bold rebuild with 50 transfers. I remember when Coach Pat Jones built a program with high school kids who bled orange. You developed men over four years, not rented mercenaries for a season. This isn't building a team, it's assembling a fantasy roster, and it spits on everything that made this place special.
This whole 50-man portal overhaul is a disgrace to the program and Eric Morris is building a house of cards that will collapse by October. They’re calling it a bold rebuild, but I remember when you built a team. You recruited kids out of high school, you developed them for three, four years in the system, you taught them what it meant to wear the orange and black. You think Barry Sanders or Thurman Thomas would recognize this program today? A locker room with fifty strangers who showed up because somebody waved the biggest NIL bag at them? That’s not a team, that’s a mercenary outfit. We used to have an identity. Under Coach Pat Jones, you knew what you were getting. Tough, hard-nosed football from kids who grew up dreaming of playing in Stillwater. Now we’ve got a coach who thinks he can Amazon Prime a whole new roster and have it delivered by fall camp. It’s an insult to every payer who ever stayed through a tough season to build something.
This isn’t just an Oklahoma State problem, it’s a sickness in the whole sport, but watching us dive headfirst into the madness is particularly galling. We’re acting like Colorado with their 43 transfers is some model to emulate. That’s a circus, not a football program. I watched the Bedlam games of the 80s, the real ones, where you hated those guys in crimson because you’d been battling them for years. You knew their names, their tendencies, you had history. What history do fifty guys who got here in January have? With each other? With this university? With our fans? None. Zero. They’re playing for a paycheck and a highlight reel, and the second it gets tough or a better offer comes along, they’re gone in the next window. They eliminated the spring portal window? Big deal. The damage is done. The loyalty is already dead.
Mark my words, this experiment will be a disaster. You cannot create chemistry in a few months of spring ball. You cannot install a culture when half the roster is learning the fight song. When we go down to Tulsa for that late Tuesday night game, it’s going to be a mess. A bunch of individuals who don’t know each other, playing in a rivalry game they don’t understand the weight of. Tulsa will be playing for pride, for their city, for their teammates they’ve bled with for years. Our guys will be playing for their own stat line. I’ve seen it before. This feels like the late 90s all over again, when we were lost in the wilderness, but at least then we were trying to build it the right way. This is a shortcut to nowhere. Eric Morris might think he’s being innovative, but he’s just burning down the house that Les Miles and Mike Gundy built, one portal commit at a time. This isn’t a rebuild, it’s a surrender to everything that’s wrong with college football.
