Adam Carriker has mentioned a number of times lately that he's starting to focus more on portal signees than freshman recruits. I think he's onto something.
It's not that you stop recruiting. But how many 5-star-everything kids have shown up to campus and completely flopped? And not just at Nebraska, but everywhere. We've all seen a 3-star or No-star kid hit the weight room and suddenly they crack a 2-deep. The problem with freshman recruits is that they ALL look like superstars because they're playing against high school competition.
Getting those portal and juco kids means we've seen how they perform in college. Maybe not always at a P5/FBS tier like Nebraska, but obviously we've just picked up a pile of kids from Texas, LSU, FSU, A&M and Okie State. You can tell a lot by how a kid suits up for a college team. Did they come to practices on time? Did they eat 57 lbs of cake during the offseason? Do they learn playbooks quickly? Those are the intangibles that usually surpass raw talent, and we get to see a lot more of that from portal/juco kids than high school players.
Also, they may have a chip on their shoulder. Current rules make it easy to transfer - once - but it gets harder to go full free agent after that first transfer. A kid who got passed over is likely trying to make their best bet on which school they can earn a starting job at, and where they can prove their old team wrong, Joe Burrow style.
I'm excited about what the portal can bring, honestly. It gives a team a LOT faster opportunity to build out a roster than taking 3-4 full recruiting cycles. This is a good thing for Frost, especially, as he needs some quick traction to save his rump.
