Football people are divided on college stars skipping bowl games

Some of college football’s highest-profile running backs have announced, in rapid succession, that they won’t play in bowl games this winter before leaving school and entering the NFL draft.

LSU junior Leonard Fournette said on Dec. 16 he’d skip the Tigers’ Citrus Bowl against Louisville. Stanford junior Christian McCaffrey said three days later he’d follow suit and not play in the Cardinal’s Sun Bowl against North Carolina. A day after that, Baylor’s Shock Linwood, a senior, said he’d skip the Cactus Bowl against Boise State to focus on his draft prep, too. To some degree, we might be watching this become a trend.

While Fournette and McCaffrey are leaving school with a full year of eligibility remaining, the debate isn’t about their underclass status. It’s about players deciding these second-tier bowl games aren’t important enough to risk injury and detract time from getting ready for the pro game.

An NFL personnel executive summed up the case pretty well to FOX Sports’ Bruce Feldman:

“Put yourself in their shoes, an injury could change the course of the rest of their lives,” the veteran NFL personnel man said. “We’re not talking about a left guard here. We’re talking about a skill (position) player who is a huge target. That’s the reality of it.

“Look at what these coaches are making now. Those guys are making $5 or $6 million a year and they may pressure these kids to play? Look at what these coaches and ADs are doing. It’s OK for them to leave, but it’s not OK for players to think about their futures? For coaches to (be critical), that’s incredibly selfish. Hold on a second here, guy. You pressure these kids to play, and then one of them (suffers a career-altering injury) and it’s, ‘I love you, and you’re a great teammate. Sorry about that.’ And it’s all for some bowl game who no one cares about? That’s a joke. I’m looking at it practically. If it was your son, what are you gonna say? It makes sense.”

And from a Power 5 head coach, to Feldman:

“If some coaches can skip bowls to get ready for their next job, how can anyone fault Fournette or McCaffrey?”

Coaches all over the country change jobs during bowl season every year. Some of those coaches stick around to coach the bowl for the program they’re about to depart. Others do not. They’re rarely castigated for it. When players skip a bowl for draft prep, they’re doing it as part of a de facto job change.

Former South Carolina running back Marcus Lattimore, who suffered a career-derailing knee injury in a regular season game during his senior year:

Former Pitt and longtime NFL safety Louis Riddick, now an ESPN commentator:

Fournette’s been oft-injured this year, which raises another point.

Bruce Arians, the Arizona Cardinals coach, doesn’t seem enamored:

“That would concern me. Depending on what their situation is as a team, because this is a team sport. But you’ve had a couple of guys get injured in the last couple years. Agents have a lot to say about it. Parents have a lot to say about it. But, it would concern me.”

Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott, who left Ohio State with eligibility still on the table, went through a bit of a public journey:

But then:

Former NFL MVP Marshall Faulk:

That might be a rhetorical question, but the answer is something like: “If he’s not healthy in the first place, he’s definitely not playing 16-plus games in the NFL.”

Danny Kanell, a former quarterback who’s now an ESPN analyst:

Prescott is paid liquid money for every individual game he plays, including playoff games. College players get sometimes cool, sometimes uncool bowl game gifts, but they don’t get money. They are not, in the NCAA’s own eyes, employees.

Former Notre Dame linebacker Jaylon Smith, who injured his leg in last year’s Fiesta Bowl and saw his draft stock suffer as a result:

It’s worth noting that Smith isn’t criticizing others and is only saying what he’d do.

ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit, another former college quarterback:

Miami coach Mark Richt, also a former college player, makes a similar case:

“I think it’s sad, personally,” Richt said after practice Tuesday. “Football is the greatest team sport there is, and I think until the season is over, you should be with your team, really and truly.

“You can take out whether I want a guy to stay to help us win and all that. Football is the greatest game. It’s the greatest game because it’s a team game. Everybody is counting on each other.

“I bet their teammates are like, ‘I understand. I understand.’ Maybe face to face. But I bet you when they lay their head on the pillow, they’re like, ‘Why is that guy doing that? We’re a team. We paid the price together.’

“It’s sad.”

Boston College coach Steve Addazio doesn’t like it:

Well, I mean, I’m not in favor of any of that. I don’t understand that. You have a bowl game, you have your team, you’re with your team, and I think a bowl game is a reward for your team, and you go play together, compete together. You don’t need to rush your -- everybody wants to rush their life, and then when they get on the other side of that thing, I talk to guys like Mike and Maurkice Pouncey all the time, and they wish they could go back because it’s such a unique time in their life. I really don’t understand that. I hope that’s not something that’s going to -- once again, here we go, create that. I hope not. But everybody has got their own individual reasons, I guess, why they do what they do, but at the end of the day, I just think about how we all started this thing, one of our goals was to get to a bowl game as a team, and we want to go as a whole team and compete as a team. I can’t understand all that.

Does it devalue games? No. I just think that, like everything else, here we go with some -- there’s plenty of great players out there that are playing in their bowl games. I don’t know where all this stuff comes from, I really don’t.

He sees it as a product of the sport’s devaluation of non-Playoff bowls:

“We kind of created this trend,” Saban said Wednesday. “I said as soon as we had a playoff, we were going to minimize the importance of all the other bowl games. I’m not saying whether it’s good or bad, it kind of is what it is.

“I don’t know where all this is going, but I don’t think it’s going to change. Is it good? Probably not. But you can’t blame the kids. It’s a product of what we created.”

Saban also said that you can’t avoid injuries.

“I don’t coach football afraid that people are going to get hurt,” he said. “Injuries are a part of the game. Injuries are a part of every sport. Tennis players get hurt. Tiger Woods got hurt. I don’t think you can live your life concerned about that when you’re an athlete and you’re trying to create value for yourself. I would tell every guy that you benefit more from going and playing really well than by not playing. If you play really well, that enhances your value.”

The first is that football is football. Players and coaches are all about being part of a team and contribute to something that’s bigger than any one man. That’s a good attitude. Teamwork makes the dream work.

But it isn’t hard to see how that line of thinking can lead players astray. If they play and get hurt, it helps no one. If they delay draft preparation, it helps the college team, but not the individual.

As one longtime NFL offensive lineman puts it:

The majority of bowl games aren’t a lot more than glorified exhibitions. Stanford could get more out of McCaffrey making himself a first-round pick than it would from winning the Sun Bowl. It is, after all, the Sun Bowl.

The second is that these are college students. Think about what college students are supposed to be doing in college: readying for a career after it. College can be fun — best four years of your life! — but personal and professional development are its core purposes. If your chosen career path is play pro football, there could be more value in getting started on independent preparation, including the hiring of an agent to line up workouts and build relationships. College players can’t hire agents and stay eligible.

The third is that running backs have a hard job. Every carry over a three- or four-year career moves a running back one carry closer to the end of his career. Bodies have limits, and running backs take beatings almost every time they touch the ball, and sometimes even when they don’t. Running backs are considered easily replaceable, and their earning window is only so wide.

It’s not fair to fault players for trying to maximize their dollar value. If skipping a bowl game helps them do that, who are any of us to judge them?

Running backs are the current flashpoint in this discussion, but the outlook won’t change much when players at other positions make the same call. And if a player on a College Football Playoff team ever does it, the outcry against it will get even louder.