Just saw Bill Connelly's MAC preview and he's got us projected middle of the pack again, same story every year since we joined this league. Back in the 1998 season we had a group of guys who came in as freshmen, lived in the same dorms, ate together in the cafeteria, and built something real over four years. Now I watch these kids jump from school to school every December looking for a bigger NIL bag and I wonder how you build any kind of continuity. You cannot tell me that 43 transfers at Co...
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You see this Luther Davis story, an ex-Alabama defensive tackle pleading guilty to impersonating NFL players on investor calls, and it just sums up everything wrong with the sport now. Back in the 1978 season when we were learning the veer under the lights at Bentley, none of this fast money culture existed. Kids today grow up watching the portal and NIL and thinking the whole game is about getting a bag without earning it. We had a defensive tackle in the early 80s who worked the offseasons at the local lumber yard and showed up to camp with busted hands and a work ethic you couldnt buy. Now you got guys pretending to be David Njoku and Michael Penix Jr. to steal from people because the whole ecosystem is built on chasing dollars instead of building character. NIL and the portal turned college football into a trnsactional circus and stories like this are the natural result. You want to fix the sport, you gotta start with teaching these kids what it means to actually earn something.
This Luther Davis story reminds me of? The 1994 season when we had a defensive tackle who actually showed up and played instead of trying to scam people on Zoom calls. Three NFL players he pretended to be. Three. Back when I started watching this program in the late 70s we had guys who couldn't afford to pay for their own textbooks let alone think about impersonating millionaires. Now you got former Alabama players running wire fraud schemes and the whole sport is just a circus. Coach Curran would have run that kid off the field before he could even think about pulling something like that. The NIL money has turned these kids heads before they even get to the league.
Watched that spring game and all I could think about was the 1991 season when we had that three-game stand against Assumption, Stonehill, and Saint Anselm. Those boys knew what a rivalry meant. You look at what the SEC has done with this draft, 87 players picked, and the whole world is supposed to bow down. But I remember when we used to pack the stands for the NE-10 title game against Bryant back in 2003 and you could feel the hatred in the air. Not this manufactured conference realignment nonsense where nobody knows who their real enemy is anymore.
The portal killed the rivalry. Plain and simple. You used to spend four years hating the same guys on the other sideline. You knew their quarterback's name, you knew which defensive end talked trash, you knew exactly which coach ran up the score two years ago and you were waiting for payback. Now half the roster turns over every winter and you're facing a team full of mercenaries who don't even know the history. The 1998 team would have laughed at the idea of playing a "rival" that you only see once every three years because of some television contract.
I miss the days when the NE-10 championship meant something real. When we played Southern Connecticut in November and the wind was howling and the field was frozen and both teams had been building toward that moment since August two-a-days. Not this spring practice nonsense where we're trying to figure out which portal transfer fits the culture. You can't build a rivalry with guys who are already looking at their next destination before the season even starts.
The SEC can have their 87 draft picks and their fancy stadiums and their billion-dollar TV deals. Give me a cold Saturday in October against a team we've hated for thirty years and I'll show you what real football looks like. Everything else is just noise.
Watching the NFL draft and seeing 87 SEC guys get picked just reminds me of our 1998 team that put three guys into the league despite nobody giving us the time of day. We built those rosters with homegrown kids who stuck around four years and learned the system, not these mercenaries swapping jerseys every spring. The portal culture has turned loyalty into a joke, back when we had that 1994 squad every senior knew the playbook front to back and you earned your spot by grinding through August ...
You want to know what kills me watching these SEC guys get drafted in the third round tonight? It's not the talent, those boys can play. It's the way we used to build a roster back in the 1990s when Coach would drive his own car to a kid's house in New Hampshire and sit in the living room with the parents for three hours. No NIL package, no portal escape hatch, just a handshake and a promise that if you worked hard you'd earn your spot. We had a kid from my hometown in 1994 who turned down a partial scholarship to a MAC school because he wanted to be part of what we were building at Bentley. Stayed all four years, started three, and to this day he says it was the best decision he ever made. Now these kids are committing to the highest bidder and transferring the second they don't start as a true freshman. The old way built character, not just a paycheck.
Watching these SEC guys go in round 3 of the draft and all I can think about is the 1991 team we had. Those boys didn't have any of this NIL nonsense or transfer portal. They just showed up in the August heat and out-toughed everybody. That's what built this program.
I miss in this era of 50-man portal overhauls and 5-star NIL bidding wars? I miss the option. The triple optoin. The old-school wishbone and veer that we used to run in the late 80s when Coach [name] was here. Nobody runs it anymore because every quarterback wants to be a pocket passer and every recruit wants to throw it 40 times a game. But I remember watching our 1992 squad control the clock for 38 minutes against a bigger team because we had two option pitches and a fullback dive that nobody could stop. That offense built character.
These spread offenses are all flash and no substance. You watch Colorado bring in 43 transfers and run some gimmicky RPO stuff and it looks pretty for three quarters until you need to grind out a fourth quarter lead. The option taught you discipline, taught you to read one man and make a split-second decision. Our 1998 backfield had three guys who could take it to the house on any given pitch and they all played together for three years. No transfer portal, no NIL distractions. Just hard work and repetition until the mesh point was automatic.
I see Oklahoma State bringing in 50 new faces and I just shake my head. You cannot install the option with a brand new roster every spring. It takes time, trust, and continuity. Things this generation of fans will never understand.
Just saw Colorado trotted out 43 portal transfers this spring and I about spit out my coffee. Deion is out here running a free agency camp not a football program. Back in the 1998 season when Coach Curran was building our NE-10 contenders we had maybe two transfers in four years and one of them was a kid from Assumption who walked on and earned every single rep in practice before he ever saw the field on Saturday. That kid showed up in August with a duffel bag and a dream and by October he was starting because he outworked everybody. Not because he had a recuriting ranking or a NIL deal waiting for him.
The walk on culture is completely dead and that breaks my heart more than anything else about modern football. Remember when we used to have that open tryout every August and youd see 40 kids from the student body show up in grass stained cleats hoping to get a look? Some of our best special teams guys in the early 2000s came from those tryouts. Kids who loved the game so much they were willing to get hit in practice every day for zero scholarship just to wear the Falcon on their helmet. Now those kids dont even bother because they know the roster is full of portal mercenaries who are just passing through for a season or two before they hit the portal again.
The 1994 squad had a walk on defensive end who ended up being team captain his senior year. He worked construction during the summer to pay for his own meals because the scholarship money ran out. That kind of grit builds a culture you cant buy with a $20.5 million revenue sharing cap. You cant portal your way into having a kid who bleeds your colors because he earned his spot the hard way.
I watch these spring games now and I dont recognize half the names on the roster. Theyll be gone by December anyway. The walk on made college football what it was. Now its just a business transaction.
Just saw that piece on Notre Dame's spring game and all those shiny new offensive weapons they're trotting out. Makes me think about the old days when we used to hold our spring scrimmages on that worn-out grass field behind the gym because the stadium was still getting fixed up from the winter. I remember standing on the sideline in 1988 watching Coach [name] run the same six plays over and over until the guys got them right. No cameras, no hype, just a clipboard and a whistle. Now everything's a production. Kids today will never know what it felt like to earn the right to play on that field after a long winter of shoveling snow off the bleachers ourselves.
Just saw Kiper and Yates going through their final mock draft and it got me thinking about the old NE-10 bowl days. Remember when we used to get invited to the ECAC Bowl up in Worcester or that one year we went to the NCAA Division II playoffs back in 2000? That was real football. You earned that trip by winning your conference, not by having a .500 record and a big enough checkbook. The whole bowl system now is just a participation trophy circus with 80 games nobody watches.
I still think about the 1999 squad that went 9-2 and got snubbed by the selection committee. Coach [name] had those boys playing assignment football, grinding out wins in November when the field turned to mud at our old stadium. We beat Assumption on a cold Saturday that year and the whole team carried the trophy to the parking lot where we had a tailgate that lasted until midnight. You cant buy that kind of memory with NIL money.
Now the draft is all about the same five programs and our guys barely get a mention unless they transfer up. The portal killed what made programs like ours special. We used to develop kids from Massachusetts high schools, watch them grow into men over four years, and send them into the world as engineers and teachers who happened to play football. Now every kid with a decent highlight tape is looking for the next check.
I miss the old bowl trips when we'd bus down to some regional bowl game and the whole town would show up. We had a real community around this program. Now its just business.
Saw Nebraska is dropping six hundred million on their stadium. Good for them, I guess. But it just makes me think about how we used to know every team in our conference, every stadium, every bus ride. Now you need a map and a glossary to figure out who’s playing where. The old NE-10 had soul. You knew what a trip to New Haven meant, or a game against Stonehill. Now it’s all about TV markets and these bloated super-leagues that stretch from coast to coast. They sold the soul of regional football for a few extra bucks, and the kids today will never know what they lost. The rivalries that built this sport are just afterthoughts now.
The entire concept of a locker room is dead. You see these stories about Oklahoma State bringing in fifty transfers or Colorado with foryt-three new faces, and I just think back to our 2003 team that went 10-2. Those guys bled for each other for four years. They knew what it meant to wear the jersey because they built it from the ground up.
Now? It's a hotel lobby. A kid has a bad spring practice and he's in the portal before the Gatorade coolers are put away. They talk about "mindset shifts" like it's some new-age therapy, but the real shift is from commit to convenience. Bryce Underwood breaks a record at 18 and the first thing people talk about is his mindset after a loss, not the seniors who helped him get there. Those seniors are probably at three different schools by now.
Alabama is choosing between Austin Mack and Keelon Russell, two guys who probably haven't even shared a full offseason together. How do you build trust? How do you have any institutional memory? The portal hasn't just changed rosters, it's erased the soul of a program. We used to have captains who led for years. Now we have rental players leading group chats. It's a disgrace.
Texas Tech getting a five-star recruit just proves NIL is a bidding war now. Kids used to commit to a program, not a paycheck. Our 1999 team would laugh at this.
Just saw that Oklahoma State has 50 new portal guys. That's not a football team, that's a mercenary camp. Coach [name] built his 1998 squad with four-year players who bled for the program.
Colorado...
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