I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t sit on the sidelines in street clothes or wear the jersey of my team without pads and watch my teammates go out there and play. I know we are in a different age of college football, and this generation of players has a different view on things, but I just couldn’t do it
For some players, you can tell it’s killing them, and based on what I know about them, they wanted to play badly and were just told it wasn’t smart. Former Ohio State WR Garrett Wilson spoke of this on social media…
Just to have played one more w the roommates etc… the way it’s set up, it doesn’t make sense to play in a non playoff bowl, and that’s the info you get when you start having talks about going pro
— Garrett Wilson (@GarrettWilson_V) December 31, 2023
Agents and advisors are telling elite NFL prospects to sit it out if it’s not a playoff game, and I get it. And I’m told Ohio State WR Marvin Harrison Jr. nearly died inside sitting on the sidelines watching his team struggle on offense in the 14-3 loss to Missouri in the Cotton Bowl. But a business decision is a business decision, I suppose, and we all saw what happened to LB Jaylon Smith in the Fiesta Bowl after the 2015 season. Smith was projected to be a top-five pick in the NFL Draft before he tore his ACL and landed at the top of round two, a fall that cost him millions. I get it.
But what about the non-first-rounders? And what about when gaggles of players sit out like Florida in 2020 and Florida State this season, leaving their teammates to struggle? I just don’t think I could do it.
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Now listen, I get it. I wasn’t good at football. I didn’t have to make a business decision ever as a player. But I’ve been around football for four decades and been in this business since the mid-1990s and I’ve talked to countless coaches and players over the years. And there is a discernible difference between player and coach attitudes from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s than there is over the last decade or so. Smith’s injury started this, and RBs Christian McCaffrey and Leonard Fournette made it acceptable after the 2016 season by opting out of their bowl games. At first, I thought the NFL owners and GMs would frown upon this, but Fournette went No. 4 overall in 2017 and McCaffrey went No. 8 overall, and we were off and running.
Now we have mid-rounders or even late-rounders sitting out and entire rosters being depleted, and it’s hard to watch players on the sidelines at bowl games laughing it up while their teammates battle. I know it’s easy to judge from a distance, but it’s just a tough look.
The expanded playoff will help things, but if you’re dumb enough to think we won’t have opt-outs down the line from playoff games, you’re crazy. They just won’t be as obvious as we will see more and more injuries that players don’t fight back from à la Nick Bosa in 2018. If you remember, Bosa had a core injury in week three that was obviously serious, but some questioned whether he could have come back in time to play for the Buckeyes again before heading off to the NFL. The Buckeyes lost to Purdue in Urban Meyer’s last season and finished sixth in the playoff rankings. Would Bosa have returned had they made the playoffs? No one knows, but he recovered in time to participate fully in the 2019 NFL Combine in early March. Bosa claims he knew he was done for the season after his injury occurred, and we may never know the truth, but we can certainly expect more and more guys to put themselves in a place where a decision won’t look like turning their backs on teammates and more like a struggle to fight through injury. It’s just where we are headed.
So enjoy guys like QB Bo Nix while we have them because potential first-rounders playing in non-playoff bowls is about to go the way of the dinosaur in college football, and the “band of brothers” mentality we once saw back in the day is circling the drain. And I just don’t think I could do it, call me whatever you’d like.
