Commitment means everything in college sports. Coaches will tell you that buy in means the world to the success of their programs. Without buy in, practices have less energy and focus, and ultimately teams cannot meet their potential in competition. College athletes are asked to sign a National Letter of Intent committing to play a particular sport for the school they attend, in exchange for a promise from the school to pay for portions of (if not all) tuition, room and board, and now even a stipend. More and more, the football athlete is not holding up their end of the bargain.
With 44 bowl games this season involving 86 teams (two teams will play a second bowl game – the CFP Championship game) you now have more than half of the FCS teams scheduled to play in a bowl. High profile players from these teams are now choosing to quit on their teams prior to these bowl games. Select college football athletes are quitting at the end of their team’s regular season (but prior to the bowl game) to avoid playing one last game where the result could harm their professional draft status, either by injury or by a poor game performance.
The media has softened the terminology for these athletes quitting on their teams to the more palatable (but no less selfish) term ’opting out’. Individuals opting out of their seasons leaves the remainder of the team and coaching staff in a lurch to fill key positions, and retool strategy with players missing. The college football bowl season is beginning to lose its luster due to the opting out of key athletes prior to the bowl games.
One key bowl game impacted by this trend is the Peach Bowl, pitting (I had to do it) Michigan State University against the University of Pittsburgh. Kenneth Walker III for Sparty, and Kenny Pickett for the Panthers are each team’s top individual by far, and most pundits see both making significant impacts on Sundays in the NFL soon. Both Walker and Pickett opted out, reducing the Peach Bowl from must see TV, to just a really good game with a couple of reserves auditioning for starting roles in the fall of 2022.
An athlete’s fear of the risk of a lowered draft selection resulting in millions of dollars lost is understandable. Jaylon Smith’s devastating injury in the Fiesta Bowl in 2016 is an extreme case. However the risk of injury is no less during the season, it actually may be higher during the season. The stakes are high mid-season when the team is vying for relevance and conference supremacy, and aiming for more lucrative bowl games. With those high stakes are heavier and harder tackles, and split second decisions gone wrong posing just as much risk to the athlete as a bowl football game would. So where is the commitment from the athlete to finish the season? It is now non-existent really. An athlete can opt out at any time, and its not even called quitting any more.
Athletes who are positioned for a favorable draft result (like Walker and Pickett) have much to owe to their schools; without being recruited to one of these teams, the athlete would not have a draft status. I have iterated in previous posts that these athletes get a free college education as part of their agreement. Some of these athletes would not have even been accepted to their respective schools to get that degree if not for the massaging of institutional acceptance standards for top notch athletes. In the event of an injury, the best pro-players can still ’fall back’ on a college degree to have a career.
So what does Walker owe to MSU, and Pickett owe to Pitt for quitting, errrr opting out? I think they owe that semester’s tuition, room and board, and stipend back to the school. This should be a drop in the bucket to each of them if they believe they will be getting millions in the NFL draft. The NFL is culpable here too. If an athlete quits on their collegiate commitment, shouldn’t their draft status drop too? (NFL teams ideally should not want to draft an athlete who has proven to quit on their team.) Alas NFL scouts suffer from FOMO; taking a pass on an athlete that becomes a star on another team is a black eye to the scout, and to the team in general. The NFL teams will draft both Walker and Pickett without much concern for their already demonstrated capability to quit on their teams for selfish gain.
Like freedom of speech, I am all for free markets and freedom of choice. However the freedom of choice for an athlete does not justify freedom from consequences. Right now there are no significant consequences for opting out of a football season. Until there are consequences, there is no end in sight to the quitting of these players when the teams need them most. That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet. Quitting, called by another name – opting out – still stinks.
Paul MacDonald - Sports Broadcaster 