ESPN ranking portal classes and we are supposed to be impressed. I remember when Pat Jones built teams through junior colleges and walk-ons who would bleed orange. Fifty transfers is not a program, it is a rental car.
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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 ...
You see this Brendan Sorsby situation at Texas Tech and it takes me right back to the old Bedlam wars when we'd beat them in Stillwater and their fans would sit in silence for the whole drive back to Norman. That rivalry meant something because we hated each other for decades not because we shared a transfer portal class. Now Tech loses their starting QB to a gambling addiction and the whole Big 12 race gets reshuffled like it's nothing. BYU and Utah rise up like they've been here forever. Conference realignment destroyed what made this league special. I miss when we knew who our rivals were on September 1st and they were the same ones on November 30th. Now it's just a business arrangement.
Gambling addiction taking out a starting QB in Lubbock and I'm supposed to believe this sport has improved since the 80s. Back then we worried about a kid getting homesick, not betting on games. This whole era feels like a circus.
Fifty portal guys and we are supposed to believe that builds a program
You see that 2027 five-star list ESPN put out? Twenty-one of them and I guarantee you half will transfer before they ever play a meaningful snap in November. Back in the Les Miles days we had to watch high school film of a kid from Ardmore or Lawton, drive down to his living room, sit with his mama over iced tea, and sell him on the orange and black. You built relationships over two years, not two weeks in the portal. Now some booster slides a check across the table and a kid who has never stepped foot in Stillwater is suddenly our startign left tackle. We used to grow our own. Now we just rent them for a season and act surprised when they leave for the next highest bidder. That is not building a program. That is running a hotel.
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.
You want to know what gets me about this 50-man portal overhaul Eric Morris is doing? It reminds me of the 1988 season when Pat Jones had us at 4-7 and we didn't blow up the roster, we just went back to work. We ran the ball down people's throats and we hit them in the mouth. That's how you build toughness, not by running a draft combine in Stillwater every spring.
I watched Barry Sanders run behind offensive linemen who had been in the program for three years. They knew each other's families. They could block in their sleep. Now we're supposed to believe 50 strangers walking into Boone Pickens is going to create some kind of brotherhood? You can't manufacture grit in a portal window. You earn it through August two-a-days when the heat is cooking and you're throwing up on the sideline next to the same guy who's been next to you for three years.
The 1992 squad that went 0-10-1 didn't go grab 50 mercenaries. They took their lumps, they got tougher, and by 1994 they were bowling again. That's how it used to work. This new model feels like we're building a fantasy football roster instead of a football team. I hope I'm wrong. I really do. But toughness isn't something you can buy on the open market. You either have it in your soul or you don't.
Just saw those NFL scouts ranking quarterbacks for the 2027 draft and it got me thinking about something we have completely lost in this sport. The option offense. Back in the 80s and early 90s, watching Barry Sanders and then Thurman Thomas run that veer out of the I-formation, you could see defenses panic before the ball was even snapped. There was an art to reading the end man on the line of scrimmage, making that split second decision that could turn a four yard gain into a sixty yard touchdown. Now everything is RPOs and spread concepts where the quarterback just looks at a picture and decides. The option took guts, it took timing, it took chemistry between the QB and the back that you cannot build in a tranfer portal window. Coach Pat Jones understood that. You cannot buy that kind of football with NIL money.
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...
Really gets me about this new era of college football? The walk on. Remember when a kid would show up unrecruited, walk into Boone Pickens with nothing but a dream and a high school highlight tape, and earn a roster spot the old fashioned way? Guys like that built the heart of this program back in the 80s and 90s. Pat Jones would find diamonds in the rough at tryouts, kids from small Oklahoma towns who would run through a wall for a chance to wear the orange. Now we bring in 50 portal transfers and the walk on is a dying breed. The staff probably doesnt even know where the practice squad locker room is anymore. You had kids who would stay for five years, redshirt, scout team, special teams, eventually earn a start as a fifth year senior. That was loyalty. That was grit. Now a kid walks on, gets a cup of coffee, and transfers to Tulsa or Central Arkansas the second he doesnt see the field. The whole culture of earning your spot through sweat and blood and late nights in the weight room is gone. Replaced by a spreadsheet and a bag of NIL cash. Makes me sick.
I miss? Sitting in the old stadium on those late October nights when the wind would cut through the bleachers and you could feel the whole place shake. We used to pack in there for the Bedlam games back in the 80s and the energy was something you just cannot buy today. These kids now with their fancy suites and club levels will never understand what it meant to freeze your tail off on those metal benches just to watch the Cowboys grind out a win. That was real football.
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.
All these mock drafts just reminds me we used to send guys to the Holiday Bowl or the Alamo Bowl and it meant something. Now the season ends and half the roster is just waiting for their name to get called by some NFL team they’ve never heard of. The bowl trip was the reward, not just a pit stop before the combine. That 2010 team celebrating in Tempe after the Alamo, that’s what’s missing.
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.
Just saw the news about Oklahoma State bringing in 50 portal transfers. Fifty. That’s not a football team, that’s a convention. It reminds me of the 2011 squad, a group that grew together and fought for each other. You can’t build that with a receipt.
This is what realignment has done. It’s not just about maps and TV deals anymore. It’s created this frantic, desperate atmosphere where a program feels it has to completely gut itself and start over every few years just to keep up in a league that doesn’t even resemble the one we signed up for. We used to know our opponents, their tendencies, their best players. Now we’re playing a schedule full of strangers while trying to field a team of them.
The heart of a program used to be its continuity. The guys who stayed through the lean years and became legends. What are we building for now? A one-year rental to maybe get to a bowl game nobody remembers? The Big 12 I fell in love with died when Oklahoma and Texas left. Now we’re all just scrambling in the rubble, and this 50-man swap meet is the perfect, depressing symbol of it.
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.
