Football coaches, executives and sports journalists are falling all over themselves to label a talented trio of college football running backs as selfish. NFL prospects Leonard Fournette of LSU, Shock Linwood of Baylor and Christian McCaffrey of Stanfordeach announced they would skip the bowl season to prepare for the upcoming NFL Draft.
OMG! How will their teams fare in the college playoffs? Oh wait. None of the schools involved qualified for the Peach Bowl or the Fiesta Bowl, which will serve as the semifinals for the national championship game this season. None of the teams even qualified for the other prestigious well-known bowls such as the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Cotton Bowl or Orange Bowl.
The bowl games in question are the Hyundai Sun Bowl (Stanford vs North Carolina), the Motel 6 Cactus Bowl (Baylor vs Boise St.) and the Buffalo Wild Wings Citrus Bowl (LSU vs Louisville). That is not my naturally sarcastic wit at work. Those are the actual bowls we’re talking about. I can hear Allen Iverson now.
“The Cactus Bowl? We’re talking about Cactus? CACTUS? Not the national championship, but Cactus?!?!”
Sadly though, Iverson didn’t actually chime in and some of the people that did were not as insightful as The Answer.
“That would concern me,” said Bruce Arians, coach of the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals. “…Because this is a team sport.”
The Chicago Tribune’s David Haugh suggested that Fournette and McCaffrey “quit on their teammates.”
“I think it’s sad, personally,” Marc Richt, coach of the University of Miami, told the Miami Herald. “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.
Of course, college coaches often bail on their teams before the end of the season. When the bigger and better paydays come calling, coaches disappear in early December in the name of recruiting.
During the 2012-13 season, nine NCAA teams played in bowl games without the coaches that led them to winning seasons.
It’s all about the team, until a better team with deeper pockets comes calling. It’s almost always about the money.
A quick look at the sponsored bowls shows that these meaningless bowl games are big business. However, a question must be asked. How much money do these programs need?
According to Forbes, in 2014, the LSU football team generated $86M in athletic revenue. A more recent report by the Office of Postsecondary Education, showed that the amount earned by the Stanford and Baylor football teams was $37.5M and $35.5M, respectively. The NCAA earns nearly a billion dollars per year on athletics.
In 2016, the average NCAA FBS football scholarship is valued at $36,070, according to Scholarshipstats.com. While free education is certainly not worthless, it represents only a tiny piece of the pie that these schools rake in every year.
NFL-bound players must spend three or four years in college, unable to work or gain much in terms of monetary income in order to preserve their amateur eligibility. It’s time for them to cash in. Why in the world would they risk their professional careers and earning potential for a meaningless money grab?
Last season, Notre Dame linebacker Jaylon Smith was projected to the sixth overall pick in the NFL Draft. He suffered a major knee injury in the Fiesta Bowl and ended up dropping into the second round. Had he been drafted sixth, he would’ve earned $20.5M guaranteed. Instead, he had to settle for a $4.5M guarantee.
If losing $16 million isn’t enough, the injury still will affect his performance, his endorsement opportunities and possibly even his longevity.
Considering that Fournette and McCaffrey have both dealt with nagging injuries for most of the season, sitting out meaningless bowl games makes perfect sense. Linwood, Baylor’s all-time leading rusher, has been healthy, but he was suspended earlier this season and lost his starting job due to “attitude issues.” It’s understandable why he might be a little prickly over the Cactus Bowl.
Fournette summed up the silly controversy best in one tweet. It simply read, “The only person I owe something too [sic]…” with a photo of him and his young daughter.
The NCAA, schools, coaches and sponsors all will do whatever they must to earn a buck. Let’s let the players do the same. If the NCAA wants to entice outgoing players to play, it should categorize non-playoff bowl games as exhibitions and pay outgoing players for their appearances. Otherwise, all the hypocritical ‘team-first’ advocates can take several seats.
Follow Ishmael and In the Clutch on Twitter @IshmaelSistrunk
