Nevada head coach: Develop here and go make $1.4 million at Oregon

When the transfer portal came into existence, plenty of people feared that it would turn the Group of 5 and FCS into a de facto minor league for the Power 4. Years into the system now, those people were largely correct. The coaches at those levels had two choices: to complain about their new reality and find themselves out of a job, or embrace it.

Nevada head coach Jeff Choate is in the second group.

Choate knows there are precious few talented football players who dream of beginning and ending their college football careers at the University of Nevada at Reno. And so the challenge for him and his staff is to find the right players at the right time in their development cycle: talented high schoolers who are not yet physically developed enough to compete in the power conferences, or Power 4 players with NFL traits who were not refined enough as football players to see the field at their current school.

"You know what happens when you come to Nevada? You go get $1.4 million at Oregon if you're developed the right way," Choate said Wednesday as Nevada introduced its 17-man recruiting class. "A guy that couldn't play consistently at the University of Texas got drafted when he came here. A guy that was a junior college walk-on ended up becoming an All-Mountain West player and got a bag at West Virginia. A guy that was a sometimes player at Butte College then becomes a First Team All-Mountain West player. That's one of the things that we're selling.

"We know how to develop people. I do think that resonates. I think I've got some talent and ability, I need to go somewhere where I can grind and be developed. Part of that is playing, right? You're not going to get better at football by watching other people play football. Part of the problem now is some of these guys get paid so much to watch people play football that they're really not interesting in working so hard. I'm not interested in those guys."