Built this program? Walk-ons. Kids from Decatur and Mattoon who showed up with nothing to prove and everything to earn. The 1987 team had six walk-ons in the two-deep. Now everyone wants a bag before they even strap a helmet on.
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All this talk about stadium renovations and new facilities is just noise. The real soul of a place is in the old concrete and the echoes. I remember when our stadium was just wooden bleachers and the roar from the home side could shake the press box, long before anyone cared about luxury suites. You can't build that kind of history with a checkbook, and these new kids will never know what they're missing.
They're talking about the NFL Draft like it's a holiday, but it just reminds me of what we've lost. A player getting drafted used to be the culmintaion of a four-year journey you watched from start to finish. Now, half the names called spent one season at a school after two stops somewhere else. What are you even celebrating? The old Blue-Gray Game, the East-West Shrine Game, those meant something because you saw those seniors build a legacy. Now a kid plays in the Sun Bowl, enters the portal before the confetti's cleaned up, and you're supposed to care where he gets drafted? The connection is gone. The whole tradition of watching a program develop men for the next level has been replaced by a transactional highlight reel.
They're talking about a six hundred million dollar stadium renovation at Nebraska, and all I can think about is how we used to know every team in the CCIW like family. Now the map is redrawn every five years for TV money, and the soul of regional football is gone. You used to build a program to beat your neighbors, not to impress some network executive in Bristol.
Oklahoma State bring in 50 transfers is a disgrace. The 2003 team that won the CCIW would have run laps around any group of mercenaries.
Saw that story about the new Florida coach talking about waking a beast. It’s all just noise now. You know what used to wake a program up? A group of freshmen who grew up together, bled for the jersey, and stuck around for four years to build something. Now you just write a check and go shopping for a new offensive line in the portal. It’s a fantasy camp for millionaire boosters, not a football team.
I remember our 1985 Millikin squad that went 8-2. Those guys, most of them from right here in Illinois, they played for each other. They played for the guy next to them. There was no escape hatch, no bidding war waiting in December if you had a bad season. You dug in and fixed it. That’s how you build character, that’s how you build men. NIL has turned the whole thing into a transactional farce where loyalty is a weakness and the highest bidder gets your heart.
These kids at these big schools are just mercenaries. They talk about “building a culture” in spring ball while half the roster is brand new. You can’t build a culture in one offseason with rented players. It’s a facade. The beast isn’t sleeping, it’s been put down and replaced with a hollow, money-driven shell of what the sport used to be. The soul is gone, sold to the highest NIL collective.
Coach Dooley built a program that lasted, not a roster that rents
The entire concept of a "rivalry" has been gutted and sold for parts, and anyone who thinks otherwise is lying to themselves. The soul of this sport was the annual blood feud you circled on the calendar the day the schedule came out, a game where you knew every name on the other sideline because they were the same kids you'd been hating for three years. Now? You need a damn media guide just to figure out who is wearing the uniform, and half of them will be gone next year, chasing a better NIL deal. This isn't rivalry, it's corporate brand warfare with temporary employees.
I remember what it felt like for us, for Millikin, when we'd gear up for Augustana or Wheaton. You didn't just play the team, you played the entire history. You played against the ghosts of their alumni and the weigth of every single meeting that came before. The kids on that field understood they were just the current chapter in a story that started decades before they were born. The 1998 game against Illinois Wesleyan, that double-overtime heartbreaker, meant something because the same two institutions, with players who chose to be there for four years, were battling it out. There was a fabric to it. Now the fabric is made of Velcro, easy to tear off and stick somewhere else.
Look at what they've done at the top. Conference realignment was the first sin, ripping apart Bedlam and the Border War and the Backyard Brawl for television dollars. They sold our heritage for cable subscription fees. And now the portal and NIL have finished the job. How can you hate a kid who just showed up three months ago from a school across the country? How can you build a genuine, lasting animosity toward a program when its entire two-deep is a revolving door of mercenaries? The news about Colorado bringing in 43 transfers, or Oklahoma State with 50, it's a farce. That's not building a team, that's assembling a fantasy football roster with no connection to the place, the people, or the opponent across the field.
The new "rivalries" they try to manufacture are just TV matchups between logos. They'll tell you Oregon vs. Georgia is some new epic clash. It's not. It's just two collections of five-star talent and portal acquisitions who happened to schedule each other. There's no shared pain, no stolen championships, no decades of regional pride on the line. It's a business transaction. And the kids playing in it? They're thinking about their draft stock and their next NIL deal, not about avenging a loss from last year to their archrival, because half of them weren't even there for that loss.
The proof is in the silence. The stories aren't passed down anymore because there's no continuity to pass them down to. When I was in school, the seniors would tell the freshmen about the hit that defined the rivalry game five years prior. Now, the senior might have been at three different schools. Who is he going to tell? What history does he carry? He carries his own highlight reel, not the legacy of the p...
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