When you define the growth process of a football program by its foundational pieces, it’s a relatively linear process. A new regime gradually upgrades its talent level, builds depth, and turns over old rosters into ones more appropriately suited. It usually follows a linear trajectory as it’s built piece by piece, player by player. How steep and in which direction this line goes depends on the coach, but things have to build gradually from the ground up.
College football teams are not defined this way though. They should be, but they never have been. They’re defined by a handful of individual points on that line.