Hot Takes with Hinners

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the bowls and what it meant to me. Apparently, some student athletes have decided to show what it means to them.

Some of the biggest names in college football - Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey, LSU’s Leonard Fournette and Baylor’s Shock Linwood - have said they will be sitting out their respective bowl games in order to get ready for the NFL draft, also known as not getting injured before the draft.

This stems from last year’s bowl season where Notre Dame’s Jaylon Smith injured himself in the Fighting Irish’s bowl game, effectively killing his draft stock. What should have easily been a top 10 pick fell all the way to the 34th pick in the second round. This cost Smith millions of dollars.

Now, another high-profile player who should go high in the draft, Texas A&M Myles Garrett, has already said that he is playing in his team’s bowl game.

So, how should people feel about this? Is this the right decision? The wrong one? Does it matter?

There are a lot of layers here, but I’m going to focus on the student athlete. Key word being student.

These guys are given scholarships to play football - a free ride to school in return for their athletic ability. Is it ok for them to play in every game for the school except the most massive game of the season? No. How can it be? People have paid for your education, and then you let them down at the biggest moment. That’s like someone working all year for that Christmas bonus and then the boss says, “Sike!” (You youngins look up that term.)

Football is a team sport. When the biggest star sits out of the biggest game, you have to think some of their teammates, who have worked just as hard to get the team to where they are, are going to be a little bitter that someone would walk away from the season now.

Let’s go with a hypothetical. If Richie James or Brent Stockstill decide that, next season, they want to sit out a bowl game to be better prepare themselves for the draft (again, hypothetically speaking) are you, as an MT fan, going to be okay with that? You’re not…or at least you shouldn’t be. The Blue Raiders chances of winning drop drastically if those guys don’t play, regardless of the opponent.

This enhances my argument about bowl games in general. In this ridiculous bowl frenzy where you have 80 teams playing in 40 bowl games… let those numbers sink in a bit… the games mean nothing now. When players are willing to forego their last collegiate game, there’s your sign. There were actually more bowl games this year than teams that qualified for bowls; there’s your other sign.

Make the games more important, as in take the bulk of them away, and guys may want to play in them.

I, for one, hope more guys be selfish and sit... but that’s because I’m selfish and want the bowl series destroyed. However, if you’re mad that these guys are not going to play, I get that too. There’s team pride, there’s a commitment made, there’s what’s good for the school, and on and on. But, what can you do?

These players ain’t loyal…