In his first year on the Plains, new Auburn Tigers head football coach Alex Golesh knew that he and his staff were going to have to lean heavily on the transfer portal to fill in roster gaps, but in today's world of college football, that is becoming a regularity.
Committing to play football for a program used to mean something, but it doesn't mean much these days when players can jump ship at the end of the season in search of a bigger paycheck with few or no penalties. And now that there is money, agents and more money involved, tampering with other schools' players has become an even bigger problem.
According to CBS Sports, Golesh said that when it comes to tampering, there is no difference between recruiting in the SEC and in the Group of Five.
"(Tampering's) been going on for a really long time, this portal era amplified it in every imaginable way," Golesh said. "There eventually needs to be guardrails on this thing. I think we all want to know the rules in which you can operate in ... the truth is, right now, there aren't any, so you operate ethically with what you feel like is right.
"Is it right to call a kid that's on somebody else's roster to go get them? It's not. I think in a lot of way, what goes around comes around. I'm a strong believer in the football gods finding you at some point. Generally, they'll find you at the end of a game or on fourth-and-1. You've got to do things the right way."
Everyone wants to win, but there is something to be said about building a program where culture and winning getting yourself to the NFL is more important than your NIL deal. It's likely that the massive amounts of money being thrown around in college football won't last forever, and necessary guardrails will eventually have to be put in place.
"The pressure to win is great and people feel it in different ways," Golesh said. "I'm not here to judge anybody else's decisions on how they operate, but you'd love to have some guardrails within the system. I think maybe as I establish myself within this conference, I'l have more vocal opinions but I'm just the new guy on the block trying to build a program here at Auburn and do it the right way."