kids for not playing and taking the chance of getting hurt. That doesn't wash. Why did the kids play any of the games during the regular season after their team was out of the National Championship , or league Championship game. The odds of them getting hurt during the regular season is the same as getting hurt in a bowl game. It is all about money, there is no loyalty to their team or school anymore. Herbie is right.
During the bowl games, you kept hearing , you can't blame these
- Thread starter walleye38
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Brian Kelly and Lincoln Riley wave hello. It's been about money for a long time but the NCAA and schools told this fable of this being an amateur sport and it's about the education as they made millions. Hell PSU's HC has flirted with every GD opening for the last 3-4 years and parlayed it into a 10 year deal. Now he'll show how loyal he is though. The NCAA used to make it impossible for kids to leave while the coaches could leave at any time. Herbie's wrong here and was just towing the network line as they need eyes on the set. Herbie and you aren't paying for Dotson he he played and shredded his knee. Did you send money to Jake Butt a few years back when he played and killed his knee in a bowl game? So everyone else that is involved in the sport treat it like it is a business, but the players cannot.
You go to school to set yourself up to get a good paying job once you leave there. If you have a change to make 800k or 3 million based on where you get drafted and think leaving early to prep will help, it's your call as the player. D1 is the only place where you have participation trophy games at the end of the year and the kids finally called BS on it. How about they make it a real playoff like any other sport at any other level in college athletics.....it took this long for the fairy tale to be blown up.
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That is next....would have been easy after the Illinois game for a few of the players to opt out and save themselves for the draft.
My problem isn't with the Dotson and Briskers of the world. My problem is with the Tangelo and Brooks of the world.....
I think you’ll see this start happening next year. Top draft prospect - Why should I play games 11 and 12, when my team was eliminated from meaningful postseason play in game 9 or 10?
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It used to be a TEAM game. It was for most of the season, till bowl game season. I liked the days when it was completely a team game. What happened ed to the insurance policies for players?
They are still out there, we just don't recruit them.
Woohoo another opt out thread. Was getting worried
What's special about next year? Kids have been opting out of bowls for the better part of a decade at this point and it hasn't crept into the regular season in any noticeable form.
Go watch Bloomsburg vs. Shippensburg if you love the purity of the game. There's plenty of what you're looking for out there not far from your home.
Yeah, but this one’s different.
Well, when you have an example of a player skipping the last few games because his team is not going to the playoffs, and not winning the conference, let me know. That is the point I’m making.
Yes, they opt out of the bowls. My response was to agree @walleye38 that players will start skipping the regular season games once eliminated.
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Opting out of regular season games is not even remotely close to opting out of these bowl games. The semester is over and their career was been completed. The bowl is an exhibition game in the grand scheme of things. I don't understand why so many on this board seem to fail to grasp this. I think people here still must believe bowl games matter.
Play all freshman their first year than set their asses on the bench the next 2 years and see how they make out with the draft than
You want me to provide the example that proves your point? If you don't have an example maybe its not a very strong point.
I don't agree with it. Most of these teams are eliminated from day one if we are being honest. You have kids from non p5 teams opting out. You can't tell me the kid from Houston who opted out really had going to the playoffs as a goal, especially after the loss the first week of the season. Quitting midseason and opting out of a bowl isn't the same, even if you want to oversimplify it by boiling it down to "meaning".
I think its less about bowls being meaningless (they are) and more about timing. For most teams they take place over a month after the season has ended and weeks after the semesters have ended. Some kids are ready to turn their attention to the draft at that point and, using Penn State as example, they don't want to delay that by 35 days. The semester is basically over and there is a f-ton of downtime. Quitting mid season means withdrawing from classes, losing student housing and moving out early, leaving behind all of the social activities that aren't happening once classes end. If every bowl took place between the CCG weekend and the following weekend you'd see less kids opting out because they could play and then get on with their lives.
Yep, by end of season most guys are pretty exhausted. And they want to spend the holidays with friends, family, and fun. For any of these guys that make the NFL, they will not have either Thanksgiving, Christmas, or NYE off until they retire from football.
Jamar Chase and Micah Parsons are quite possibly the two biggest stars in the NFL or are set to be in the very immediate future. I'm amazed that people can't understand why talents like that would take off an amateur level sports game(s). These guys have played in hundreds of games in their careers and will play in hundreds more. Taking off a fake season (2020) or third tier bowl game is nothing. Literally nothing. Chase and Parsons represent a small fraction of a single percent of the general football player population to boot. Fans are attaching meaning to something that doesn't mean anything. It's flawed logic at its finest. I don't know any person who would risk 20 million dollars to play in the Outback Bowl, nobody. Not even Matt Corral, who by the way was in a tough spot, because winning the Sugar Bowl is a big deal at a place like Ole Miss, who doesn't go to big name bowl games regularly and isn't a blueblood school. The thing people fail to realize is that these secondary bowl games are just another game in a players career with less significance than a typical game that can help their team achieve their pre season goals. Penn State didn't go into the season with the goal of going to to third rate bowl game against an opponent that wasn't even ranked in the top 20. Additionally, it's only fanboys who are upset at this because their "team" won't be as fun to watch without their star player, meanwhile the situation provides an opportunity for the next great player who has been working hard and biding their time behind one of these great players. Meanwhile all their teammates and coaches are so happy for these guys for fulfilling their dreams of playing professional football, but not the fans....They are selfishly mad and make up some I, ME bull$hit, the team is the greatest whole, whoa is me BS. Let's be clear here, players like Micah Parsons' goal was never to play college football, it was to be a first round draft pick, be a pro bowler and win a Super Bowl.
Plus, two QB's got hurt in the bowl games (ASU and Utah). I really don't like the direction college football is headed but I can't blame the players. And, this all falls squarely on the shoulders of our good friend Mark Emmert. He was able to kill the golden goose. Congratulations to him!
Pitt’s backup started after starter opted out and broke his collarbone on second series of the game.Plus, two QB's got hurt in the bowl games (ASU and Utah). I really don't like the direction college football is headed but I can't blame the players. And, this all falls squarely on the shoulders of our good friend Mark Emmert. He was able to kill the golden goose. Congratulations to him!
I just think the fairy tale of it being an amateur sport is all but dead and people don't want to hear it or see it. They aren't the ones with a million dollar interview and combine tests coming up so it's an easy choice to be loyal when you're not actually being asked to. It's not the fans financial future on the line so they can just go on about how great and loyal they are...to a team that they aren't on and for a job they never could have.
As others have said, things have changed drastically in College football and for many reasons. Through the passing of time the numbers of African American players have surpassed the number of white players in P5 college football programs. Many African American players are highly skilled athletes who now have the opportunity to change their life circumstances and raising their families from poverty. So what happens if one of these players get injured in a bowl game? Well, they possibly lose out on this life changing event for themselves and an opportunity to help out their family. So this is why opting out is so popular today and in turn one of the reason the landscape of college football is changing. What would you do if this was your life?
When a bunch of us start opting out of ticket purchases, apparel, subscriptions and donations for facilities etc because the game sucks so much because of all the opt outs, transfers etc we’ll see how she goes then. The players are cutting there own throats in the long run. I don’t know what the answer is but the game is going down the crapper fast. The reality is Mark Emmert and company screwed the pooch on trying to get out in front of this
Rock I don't like it either because I grew up in a decade were this was not heard of so I have time periods to compare. Like I said above I understand why players do so. They certainly don't have any others in this industry to role model otherwise, you know like Joe Pa.
I doubt this ever happens to a degree that makes a difference anytime soon....didn't happen in the early 2000's when we stunk up the field or in the early 2010's after the Sandusky shit show. Remember, we graduate around 10,000 potential suckers every year.
So you’re not a sucker....never go to games...never watch watch them on tv......never go to PSU sports boards and comment......
oh....wait........
No matter the race, there have always been people whose life changes significantly with a pro career. Now, the life change has become so significant, that has become large enough that it dwarfs the college experience.
it will continue to change for good or bad, but college football is not the sport it was 15, yet alone 40 years ago
I dropped my season tickets years ago, so no, I'm not a sucker, but maybe you missed the part where I said, "I doubt this ever happens to a degree that makes a difference anytime soon....", even though it was the very first thing I said.
Also, if you're paying Penn State, or anyone, money to post comments on a free PSU sports board, then YOU clearly are a sucker.
Half agree - but I'm just as critical of the coaches who leave early, particularly after a great season and with a major bowl upcoming. Remember when Rich Rod left WVU before the final game of the season, at Pitt. Had they won, they likely would have been in the MNC game. I attribute all his failures since then to well earned bad karma.
First off, I don't totally disagree. Bowl games used to be a reward (vacation, national televised game) for a very good season. Now, as you rightly put it, they are largely practice games for the average, and I don't think most kids care about the trip to FL/CA/TX, and certainly not to Nashville, NY, Detroit, or DC.
That said, I take a pragmatic approach to this, and I think what irks people, when these kids opt out, is that the position these players are in, only exists because the fans generate Billions of dollars in football revenue for NFL and NCAA organizations through ticket sales, merch, TV eyeballs, etc.
The NFL-caliber kids that are opting out gets lots of benefits - free education, celebrity status, playing football in front of tens of thousands of people and on TV.
If fans decide to stop watching NCAA football games, much of that goes away. Them playing, and fans being interested in watching, is a mutually beneficial relationship. There is a debate to be had on the margins about how the revenue is spent/spread at a university, but there is no doubt that the players have it pretty good vs the average student and the $$ generated by fans is what provides the resources for it.
Good, bad, or indifferent. Wherever you fall on the issue, here are some realities
-Players not playing causes a break down in the fan/team/player relationship.
-If fans leave the relationship, so do their dollars as well as some portion of the benefits they provided.
-Fans feeling jilted is not only normal, it is rational. Fans have invested themselves in the team and players, and players walking away from the team is like sh*tting on that investment.
On a personal level, when all of the opt outs started happening, I decided I wasn't going to watch the game because the team playing would not be the one I invested myself in during the season. I just didn't have interest in a 2022 prep game.
Bigger picture, as I have stated on here before, people appreciate amateurism and when amateurs start acting like professionals, the interest will wane and the dollars available to CFB will start to decline pretty quickly.
What is clear is that CFB is on the precipice of major change and I don't think much of it will survive in any way that is recognizable today. It's clear that the bowl model is pretty much on it's last legs for the reasons you outline. What is not totally clear is just how much of CFB will collapse and how much will remain.
I predict a 16-20 team P1 with all other programs falling into a 2nd tier and some dissolving due to the lower revenues. Long term, I think the entire major college sport model is questionable. The US is about the only place in the world with it. As amateurism moves toward professionalism, will we just see a rise in development models like junior hockey, soccer, etc?
Again, without advocating for a particular direction, I think it is clear that NCAA football is about to go through a major upheaval and IMHO it's going to collapse in on itself.
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