Football is America’s sport, so it is not far-fetched to say that Americans have very strong opinions when it comes to our beloved sport. Along with football’s favoritism in the US, however, comes controversy. A more recent issue that coaches, players, and spectators have taken sides over is whether or not top draft prospects should be able to sit out of their bowl games as long as the team does not qualify for the playoffs. Sports fans have made pretty passionate opinions about both sides, but because of athletes’ potential earnings, the possibility of getting hurt, and the new playoff system, these star athletes should be able to skip these games. 

It is understandable why college football fans are against these players sitting out of games. Die-hard fans of their alma mater argue that since their school pays for their education, they owe it to that school to finish out the season no matter what. These fans just do not care at all about the players’ futures, and some sports junkies just want to see a win for their team, even if it means risking the future career of one of the young players. These reasons all definitely make sense, but it is so important to take a look at the bigger picture of this issue. Although that win may seem like the most important thing to a person, in the long run, the future of the athlete has so much more to offer than just that one game.

Football is easily one of the most dangerous mens’ sports out there. Every time an athlete walks onto that field, whether they are eight years old or twenty-one, they know that they run the risk of concussion, bones breaking, and even paralyzation or death. More and more parents each year seem to be pulling their children out of the game because of all of the coverage on issues such as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, better known as CTE, and the shockingly high number of injuries that are caused by the sport. Parents often have such negative associations with the sport of football that they close-mindedly ban their child from ever playing football without doing any research on the sport, which is actually pretty fair. This terrible stereotype of football most likely comes from the devastatingly high amount of football related injuries. Football causes more injuries than any other college sport with its annual average being 47,199 injuries between 2009 and 2014 (Wolfson, 2). In addition to their frequency, brutal injuries that take an athlete out of the sport for life aren’t few and far between, either. 

Career ending blows are not infrequent in football. It is actually fairly common for an athlete to walk on to a field as healthy and can be, but they take one bad hit or land on their ankle the wrong way and in that moment, their entire career is over, or at least extremely limited. Probably the most tragic story of a career-ending injury is the one of Bo Jackson, one of the only men to ever simultaneously play professional baseball and football. He was such a promising athlete and many coaches and teammates of his believed that he would go on to end up in both the MLB and Pro Football Halls of Fame. He was a running back for the Los Angeles Raiders, and in January of 1991, the Raiders played the Cincinnati Bengals in a fateful AFC playoff game. Jackson was taken down by Cincinnati linebacker Kevin Walker, resulting in a severe hip injury. He later developed a condition called avascular necrosis, which breaks down bone cells and cartilage (Neumann, 10). He tried to return to baseball, a sport that involves significantly less contact, but Jackson only lasted three more seasons and he never was able to play as well as he did before his hip was hurt. Although he was not a college football player at the time of his injury, Jackson was injured and immediately lost almost his entire future in just one snap of the game. Bo Jackson’s story just goes to show that no matter how freakishly impressive of an athlete a man may be, he is never safe from injuries. It is not worth the one extra game to play for your school when it is common knowledge that injury is so prominent in our beloved sport of football.

A situation that hits close to home with current college football players is the story of Jaylon Smith, a top prospect going into the 2016 NFL Draft. Smith, a very talented linebacker playing for a powerhouse of football team, Notre Dame, was headed to the Fiesta Bowl. Unfortunately, Jaylon Smith tore several ligaments in his knee, forcing him to get knee surgery and it was projected that he would be out for his entire next season (Goldman, 1). This caused him to drop from a very high first round pick to a second round pick, which not cost him money, but pride as well. This is a college athlete’s absolute worst fear; they absolutely kill it in a sport during college, and then never get to live up to their potential in the pros because they were injured. In addition to the possibility of getting hurt during a game, athletes who make it to the college level are not paid at all. Most of the time, their school pays for a lot, if not all, of their tuition and school fees, but the cost of attending a university is a drop in the bucket compared to what these standout men could make in the big leagues.

Being bumped down from being a first round pick to a second round pick almost always means losing a large amount of money. During the 2016 NFL Draft, the overall top pick, Jared Goff, signed for $27.9 million and the twelfth pick of the first round was offered $12.8 million. There is a very noticeable decline in the money offered to second round athletes, because while these first round athletes receive many offers in the tens of millions, the average second round pick is offered about $1.3 million per year (Gaines, Yukari, 2). Although this is still a pretty large salary, it still stings that one single game can cost a player tens of millions of dollars. It simply does not make sense for the athlete to play one last game for his school when he risks losing upwards of twenty million dollars, not to mention the pride of being chosen in the first round.

A very large part of why athletes are even questioning sitting out of their games is because several big-name guys have started the trend over the past few years. The importance of addressing this issue is because it is most likely not an isolated incident, and future top draft prospects will probably want to follow in these kids’ footsteps. This past year, the first gentleman to decide to sit out of his bowl game was LSU’s powerhouse running back, Leonard Fournette. Although the idea of a player skipping their bowl game is shocking because it is such a new concept, it makes sense that if anyone was going to do it, it would be Fournette, since officials projected that he would be picked very early on in the draft. The second big name to come forward and announce that they would end their college season early was Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey (Heitner, 1). Both men spoke, and still speak, very highly of their alma maters and announced their decisions to sit out of their games with respect and poise. A positive argument toward their side is that sitting out of their games obviously did not hurt them, as Fournette was chosen fourth overall by the Jacksonville Jaguars and McCaffrey was selected eighth by the Carolina Panthers. Younger players look up to their older teammates, so why wouldn’t there be copycats in the future generations of footballers? Seeing the model of success that Leonard Fournette and Christian McCaffery have shown will inspire other top prospects to follow in their footsteps and protect themselves from injuries in bowl games. 

In the year 2014, the NCAA switched to a four-team playoff system. This new system had several positive effects on college football, like bringing in more revenue to the conferences and schools, and it raised the stakes of the playoffs, which made them way more entertaining for college sports fans to watch. However, one extremely damaging effect that this change had on college football is that all of the excitement of the playoff games causes most people to not care about or watch the non-playoff bowl games. Even Nick Saban, the coach of Alabama, which is one of the most notoriously strong and unbeatable teams of NCAA football, claims that the new playoff system has “diminish[ed] the importance of other bowl games” and this really seems to ring true. The new playoff system is fun and exciting, but if we are going to have this fresh idea that waters down the rest of the playoffs that are going on, we have to let the players move on to the next step of their lives. Their teams already didn’t qualify for the playoffs and therefore the championship, so we should just let the athletes focus and prepare for the strenuous NFL Draft. If no one cares about these games, and draft prospects run a chance of getting hurt, then they should not have to play in the games. It is not worth the risk for these athletes to play one last game for their school.

The biggest thing that players risk when they decide to end their season early is the backlash from the public. A lot of die hard sports fans are offended when these athletes make the tough decision to sit out of their final college game. It is very common for fans and other football players to point to an athlete who is considering sitting out of their game and accuse them of being arrogant. A notable man in the football world by the name of Ezekiel Elliott, a Dallas Cowboy who was the best rookie running back in the National Football League during the 2016-2017 season, took to Twitter to share his views on the subject. He essentially called Fournette and McCaffrey disrespectful of their school. Elliott also mentioned that he would love to go back to his school and play one last game (Goodbread, 3). But surely the guys who sat out of their games didn’t sit out just because they did not care about their school and didn’t want to play one last game for them. That is not the point to the decision they made at all, but that’s what a lot of fans seem to take away from it. These young guys have so much on their plate to worry about, like the NFL Combine and the draft itself, the guys don’t choose not to play because they don’t want to, they choose not to play because they have bigger things on their agendas and it is the best decision they can make for themselves. It is easy to get confused and misunderstand the intentions of these players from an outside perspective, but they truly are just trying to do what is best for themselves and their careers. It would be extremely difficult for an athlete to have to live with a wrong decision that they made based on outside influences.

Another topic a lot of college football fans and players feel strongly about is that they believe that the players sitting out of their bowl games are betraying their teammates on their very last game together. Although surely, yes, some teammates are probably going to put their noses up to their athletically superior colleagues not playing the last game of the season, the concept of athletes sitting out is typically widely accepted by a player’s teammates. It was reported that Fournette and McCaffrey received overwhelming support by their teammates (Goldman, 1). All of these guys are in the same boat. The vast majority of them would love to play professional football, although only a small fraction of college players will ever make it to the professional level, let alone be selected first round in the NFL Draft. The players grow so close over the years and it makes a lot of sense that they would give their support to a fellow athlete who just wants to do what is the best for them self. It is crucial that these players put themselves in their teammates’ shoes and think about what they would do in that situation. 

The only evidence suggesting that perhaps college players should play in their bowl games is found in the case of Jabrill Peppers, a player and very strong safety at the University of Michigan who was rumored to have damaged his draft stock by sitting out of his final bowl game (Colangelo, 2). Peppers was still drafted relatively early in the draft at pick 25, but he still could have lost a great deal of money if he should’ve been picked in the top ten rather than just the first round. It is not completely valid to place sole responsibility of Peppers moving down the chain on his decision not to play his final game with Michigan. It is far more realistic to say that his injury is what held him back from being drafted earlier. NFL teams are taking large and expensive risks when they offer to sign injured players because despite what doctors may say, there is no telling how, or even if, a player will bounce back. This often has a large effect on how early or late a player may be picked, no matter how strong an athlete may have been before they were injured.  

College football is without a doubt one of the best things that the United States has to offer, especially down in the good ole Southeastern Conference. Many people love their schools and consider themselves to be die hard fans, and would go to any lengths necessary to pull that win for their team. The University of South Carolina has yet to have an exceptionally high draft pick in the past few years, but if we did, it would be extremely difficult to accept, let alone condone, our best player sitting out of a game. But it is so important as college football fans, that we change with the sport. Although ten years ago it would make no sense for draft prospects to sit out of bowl games because they were all valued, in this day and age, it is important to realize that these athletes sitting out of their games truly is not that big of a deal. It overall is the most sensible to let these gifted and hardworking individuals make their own decisions whether or not they want to sit out of their game, and we need to respect their decisions. At the end of the day, it is their life that is being decided by their decision, not the audience’s.
