Leonard Fornette and Christian McCaffery were the first bowl opt outs in 2016 - so yeah, they were opting out 5-6 years ago.
And I've thought since at least 1990 that we needed a playoff.
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Yes - players opted out of a meaningless game. Who cares. The bowls have always been pointless. They became more pointless when they figured out it was good to actually match up 1 v 2 and have a real National Champ.
Playoffs will keep at teams intact and give us 11 meaningful, likely exciting football games next December. I'm all for expanding to 32 teams like DII has.
The conference championship games are not going to be taken away. The SEC makes wayyyy too damn much money with it to abandon it. Especially now with a bigger conference- just makes it more prestigious
Folks are hilarious. This doesn't mean "crybabies" or proves/validates the process. Why the hell should play in a game is truly doesn't matter when they were already told all their other games they thought mattered didn't?
All this does is further illustrate the entire thing is a joke.
I'm sure it will start happening. You don't want players to opt out, win. Is it any different than a team tanking to get a better draft pick? Or benching a player so they don't have to play a performance bonus? Or to be college specific - start playing the younger guys so they have more experience for next year? If I recall correctly when our season started looking shaky you were a huge proponent of playing Parson because, guess what, our games were meaningless and getting Parson experience could matter.
Cam Dantzler sat out the game before the Egg Bowl in 2019 when he 100% could have played. There have been a few others here and there. "Business decisions" are now very much part of college football. It's hard to blame some with 50-100 million in their future on the line
Dekete