By: David Wunderlich -- May 18, 2025 The 2025 season is a milestone in the quickly changing landscape of college football. It’s the fourth season where NIL was a real factor for recruits in addition to college players. It probably feels like it’s been longer than that, but the first freshmen to get recruited with the concrete reality of compensation outside of scholarships are now seniors. The free-transfer era is even younger than the NIL era, so we are still all trying to work out what the optimal strategy is for building a team in this time. A few folks like Lane Kiffin and Deion Sanders chose to bet big on transfers. Some, epitomized in the extreme by Dabo Swinney but also including some others, choose to stay big on high school recruiting with little portal supplementing. Most coaches have been somewhere in between. In the free transfer era, Billy Napier built his 2025 team through recruiting | GatorCountry.com
Kirby Smart built championship teams with recruiting. Ryan Day built a championship team by spending 30 million. It appears both methods can be effective.
Please, I don't need anymore nightmares of speedy DE's running right past him before colliding with our QB.
I'm sure you meant to post: Kirby Smart built championship teams by paying recruits. There is no difference in what he and Day did.
I like the slow build and maybe would've preferred a few big portal guys but its the boosters and coaches that make those decisions.
You have to pick your spots and not limit your options. Ignoring the portal is the equivalent of a major league baseball team choosing to only play with players developed in their own farm system. Doing the opposite is just as dumb.