During this year’s college football bowl season, the spotlight turned away from the actual games and towards conversations surrounding star players skipping bowl games. LSU running back, Leonard Fournette and Stanford running back, Christian McCaffrey both decided to skip the final game of their collegiate career in fear of injuring themselves prior to the NFL draft- a highly controversial move that makes sense.
While these players get an incredible athletic and academic experience playing college football, there’s only one thing on these players’ minds: the league. Players are willing to put their body on the line while these universities are making millions of dollars off them just for the chance to a part of the 1.6% of college football players to be drafted by an NFL team. These players dream of the NFL for many reasons, whether it’s the love of the game, competitive drive, or to simply support their family. However, what they all have in common is their talent is worth a substantial amount of money. After 10 plus years of playing
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He said, “But when we all started [implementing a playoff system], however many years ago, it was, I said you’re going to diminish the importance of other bowl games in college football, alright?” He then added, “So you can’t really blame the players. We created this, OK? We created this.” Saban reasons that emphasizing the playoffs so much has taken away the importance of other bowls and teams that fall short of the College Football Playoffs or New Year’s Six feel like the final bowl game is just an exhibition game. If players were skipping regular season games or championship games, I would have a completely different opinion. But let’s face it, some of these bowl games are a complete joke. A 6-6 team is guaranteed to play in one and I find it hard to believe that is considered a successful