Exactly. Where was the Great Portal Strategy in his first few years at F$U?
The fact remains, there were a few schools that went HARDCORE to the Portal last year, particularly with Quantity (including USC). There was a lot of uncertaintly last year on the suspension of the IC rules (which happened late) and some more this year (the Portal official visits having to be commingled with HS official visits).
But now that more colleges are devoting more resources to scouting and signing Portal kids, why does anyone think that Kiffin and Norvell and Riley will maintain some sort of dominant position in this regard? Maybe they can, but maybe they won't.
I give Ole Miss and F$U and USC credit for being early innovators, but I'm not giving them the Top 3 Portal classes every year by virtue of that early success. Now that there is a lot more acceptance of the Portal and competition for commits, the "success stories" will be spread more thin. When you sign 14 (F$U) or 17 (Ole Miss) or 20 (USC) from the Portal, it is easier to hit "success" in spite of whatever misses you have. And the REASON that those schools had so many slots was because of PAST FAILURES.
Soooo...it becomes a bit of an ouroboros. If the best Portal classes tend to be the biggest...yet you need a lot of available slots to get a big transfer class (at least for now, when the IC slots are suspended)...then you either need a lot of "failure" in your other areas of recruiting...or you need a lot of "success" with the Portal transfers, in that they move on to the NFL draft.
Either way, it's not like you are signing all your HS kids for 5 years and all your Portal kids for 4 years. There is some level of one-and-done that may not result in an equal level of Portal success each year, particularly when there is not nearly the same time frame to scout, build relationships, and recruit kids out of the Portal as there is with HS kids.
So, yeah, plenty of valid questions as to whether what Norvell does is going to be repeatable on an annual basis. Which, of course, has NOTHING to do with what Mario is doing specifically, it has everything to do with the general concept of trying to build ANY kind of a team with continuity and sustainability.