re: The Grove Collective

I suppose a lot will depend on how Ole Miss performs this year. If they go 9-3 or 8-4 and miss the playoff, a lot of that money will dry up, especially given the relatively manageable schedule they have. With the influx of the portal players and their schedule, their supporters are expecting a season for the ages.

If they flop, or even if they succeed, they will just have to turn right around and pony up the very next year and hope, with fingers crossed, that they hit on every single transfer, which is unlikely.

If they make the Playoff, Kiffin will bolt if he gets an offer to go somewhere else where he actually has an advantage in recruiting high school players.

Listen, Lane himself has lamented buying transfer players and trying to build a team with a bunch of mercenaries, but he's going to use what's at his disposal and hope it hits big one year, and then he's gone to a better program. It worked for DeBoer at Washington, and he was gone to a better situation in a week. Lane is trying to follow that path.

There's not enough history to know if the NIL/transfer portal twins can win big and be sustained, but the movement of coaches who have profited from it suggests that they don't subscribe to the theory that it can be maintained.

Michigan State was the first to turn around a program through the portal when they brought in 15 transfers, had a great season, and got their coach a massive contract. The next season, they crashed and burned.

Will Kiffin and Ole Miss be different? Will Lane provide college football with an entirely different way to build and sustain championship programs? Unlikely, but we'll see.