LSU's Leonard Fournette and Stanford's Christian McCaffery are skipping bowl games to prepare for the NFL Draft. Baylor's Shock Linwood says he's doing so as well, but odds are his decision has a lot more to do with his strained relationship with the Baylor coaching staff than his NFL future.
I don't know if this is a new trend, or if we should be alarmed, though plenty of people have clearly shared their feelings, ranging from "it isn't a big deal," to "this is the end of college football as we know it."
So, you know, business as usual.
As for what has led to McCaffery's and Fournette's decisions, Alabama coach Nick Saban believes he knows the answer: the College Football Playoff.
"We kind of created this trend," Saban said. "I said as soon as we had a playoff, we were going to minimize the importance of all the other bowl games. I'm not saying whether it's good or bad, it kind of is what it is.
"I don't know where all this is going, but I don't think it's going to change. Is it good? Probably not. But you can't blame the kids. It's a product of what we created."
I don't believe Saban's logic is flawed, though I don't completely buy it. I believe the decisions of McCaffery and Fournette reflect changes we've seen in recent years. Everything from players at Northwestern organizing to form a possible union back in 2014, to the Ed O'Bannon lawsuit against EA Sports that helped put an end to video games using the likenesses of college athletes.
As a recent Nobel Prize winner once sang, "Times, they are a-changin."
So while I don't completely disagree the assertion that the playoff takes the shine off other bowls, I think Saban's view is overly simplistic. I mean, from 1998-2013 we had a BCS system with a national championship game that lowered the significance of other bowls like the Sun and Citrus -- the games McCaffery and Fournette are skipping -- yet there wasn't a rash of players sitting out of those games.
What we're seeing is a greater awareness among college athletes of themselves and their future worth.
