About a decade ago, we got to experience the first foray of a player dictating whether he played or not with South Carolina defensive end Jadeveon Clowney deciding to opt out. Later, Stanford superstar Christian McCaffrey made the decision to opt out of participating in the Sun Bowl and begin preparing for the NFL Draft. Following McCaffrey’s decision to focus on the draft, a mass wave of top prospects opting out of bowl games to prepare for their futures in professional football began.
Now, as college football fans watch the postseason of the 2022 season, a lot of top prospects will be absent from the game. The list of bowl opt-outs includes Joey Porter Jr, Jalin Hyatt, Will Levis, Anthony Richardson, Michael Mayer, and Cam Smith, among others.
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In this new era of football, it is more newsworthy to monitor which prospects will actually play in their team’s bowl game than the players that won’t. While it is expected that all teams that are not a part of the College Football Playoff will be forced to devise gameplans without their star contributors, two of the sport’s superstars will go against the new norms of bowl season and will participate in their team’s bowl game.
These two players are Alabama’s quarterback Bryce Young and linebacker Will Anderson. Both of these draft prospects have nothing to prove and should be top-five selections in the upcoming draft. Despite all of this and the Crimson Tide not reaching the College Football Playoff, Young and Anderson are determined to finish what they started, including competing with their teammates against Kansas State in the Sugar Bowl. This will provide a major boost for Alabama as they gameplan for the Wildcats. This game just might give fans a taste of the earlier years when bowl games were looked forward to and not looked over.
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While not participating in non-CFP bowl games is becoming the new normal and will continue to become the new normal in college football, some top prospects are committing to finishing the season with their team.
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