I was thinking about this as they were going through the player intros last night...
The transfer portal era means that a lot more schools are going to be able to claim to have former players in the NFL / Super Bowl each year... Yeah, those players might have only spent about a hot minute on campus before seeking another team and bigger NIL bag, but they were there, dammit!
When a player transfers 3 times in 4 years before joining the league, that means 4 schools get to claim him! Woo, ain't the future grand?!
I've thought about that also.
Shortly, I'm not sure what it will mean to say "that guy played for LSU." Well, sure.....he did for a season. He also played for every other D1 school in his 6 yr. medical-waiver-granted career.
There is still a window in the NFL right now when most of the "LSU guys" are really "LSU guys" as was the case with the six in yesterday's Texans/Pats game. But going forward, because I no longer really care about LSU, at least certainly not like I used to, I won't identify with them as being "our" guys. And I might miss it altogether because I'm just not bothering to learn their names anymore. Our turnover ratio has reached insane proportions, and I just want off that merry-go-round.
Now, there are a couple of guys out there who may still be debatable who are still "LSU guys" in my mind. But YMMV. Joe Burrow and Jayden Daniels come to mind. Burrow technically spent more years at Ohio State than LSU, but he did play two years in Baton Rouge, and that did constitute the
vast majority of his college snaps, so I feel justified in feeling like he's "ours." Daniels played two years at ASU and then two years in BR, though I think he was hurt for some of his ASU time. He's an even split, but he was here long enough to feel like he was ours, though I'm not against the idea of a guy being "from" two different schools. It doesn't detract from my LSU-Burrow/Daniels love to understand that they simultaneously belong to one additional school apiece, or detract from their LSU-ness. It makes sense to me to say Daniels played for both ASU and LSU, both claim him, and recognize that both have a claim to him. Similar to how both Colts fans and Broncos fans are justified in feeling like Peyton Manning was their guy....they're both correct.
That, to me, seems different than these kids who wind up at 4 different schools over 4 years, and are there for nothing more than the paycheck. While we did pay Daniels, as he was in the NIL era, it seems he still decided on a lot of things about LSU that he liked. The guys we're getting in lately.....this is just blatant pay-for-play, and when I see them in the NFL--if I even remember they passed through LSU--I don't think I'm going to feel the same about them as I do previous former-Tigers.
