You make very good points, but where I stray is that comparing our football program's expectations when BB first got here vs where our basketball program currently is with BU is night and day.When Bret Bielema took over the football program after the truncated Covid year where everybody got that freebie season, he invited (and got Josh Whitman to stump up the funds for) every single player on the roster to return on scholarship and have another go at it under the new staff, together, as a group. He Creaned not one single guy, spent his political capital getting a scholarship for the Desmond Dan's of the world rather than trying to burn everything down as fast as he could to get "his" players in.
A totally different approach than most new college football coaches take. And this offseason? We have the fewest departing portal players in the Power Five.
Roster stability can beget roster stability. Roster churn can beget roster churn.
We were not and still to a point are not an overly attractive football school. We're obviously much better and continuing to evolve, but a 6-5 season and a bowl game had people jumping for joy. BB's only option was to go with what he had. That said, our last four QB's have been portal guys, right? (Peters, Sitkowski, Devito, now we'll see what the Ole Miss kid brings). The more the football program wins, the higher the expectations will be, the more attractive the school is to higher level recruits.....then the churn and burn starts. It's inevitable. We're a couple of good seasons from BB being deeply involved in the portal.
BU has created expectations, he is involved with elite recruits, he lands high level recruits, we are definitely one of the haves vs have nots when it comes to NIL money, we're a portal destination because of that money and he's working with a scholarship max of 13(??). His options with how he can operate is ten times that of BB. I can't reiterate it enough that BU has created an environment where winning is the only option and we're not talking about 20 wins and an NCAA Tournament appearance. That wasn't good enough. People were very upset. Short of being in the top 3 in the conference and a Sweet 16...some deem it as unacceptable.
We are talking about two totally different situations. If BB has the football program consistently winning 9 games.... we'll see if his approach changes, as the options increase and the pressure to win increases.