Question: Why should college football fans care about bowl games when the players, apparently, do not?
That’s the impression I get after scanning a long list of so-called “opt outs” comprised of players who’ve decided to enter the transfer portal or declare for NFL draft.
Let’s take Arkansas, for example, where a bunch of Hogs have already fled before the team loaded onto buses for the trip to Memphis to face Kansas in the Liberty Bowl. The list headed by Drew Sanders, a first-team all-American at linebacker who is projected to go high in the NFL draft.
His decision to opt out and prepare for the NFL Combines is clearly understandable. But these other guys? Really?
If I’m with the Chamber of Commerce in Memphis, I’m changing promotions for Wednesday’s Liberty Bowl to “Come for our BBQ, our music, and stay for the game — but only if you want.”
Don’t get me wrong because the Liberty Bowl has long been one of my favorite postseason venues. My only claim to fame occurred at the Liberty Bowl in 1984 while covering the Arkansas-Auburn game for the Blytheville Courier News. A big, strong running back came barreling through, knocked me down, and left me sprawled out behind the sidelines. It was Bo Jackson, and it was marvelous.
I haven’t seen much of a backlash against players who’ve opted out, which is quite different from 2003, for example, when Shawn Andrews missed Arkansas’ final game against Missouri in the Independence Bowl at Shreveport, La. Andrews cited stress and a lack of sleep while battling an acute sinus condition on his decision to forgo his final game as a Razorback and prepare for the NFL draft.
If anyone deserved to opt out it was Andrews, a consensus two-time All-American on the offensive line who went on to an All-Pro career with the Philadelphia Eagles. But Andrews’ reasoning to bypass the Independence Bowl met with much skepticism among the fan base and even Houston Nutt, the Arkansas coach at the time, was reluctant to talk about the situation.
“Right now I’m just really trying to give all the attention that I have to these guys right here,” Nutt said, referring to the rest of the team in an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article posted Dec. 17, 2003.
My, how times have chanced.
There’s no question the emphasis in college athletics has shifted from the coaches and what’s best for a school’s program to the priorities of the athletes themselves. If a player wants to leave today he can do so, even if he’s headed to his fourth school like former Southern Cal, former Georgia, and former West Virginia quarterback JT Daniels, who announced recently he’ll play his final season in 2023 for the Rice Owls.
It’s my view that all-out free agency is unsustainable in college athletics, especially when NIL money (name, image, and likeness) is not equally distributed like NBA Hall of Fame player and political activist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar suggested during a speech at the University of Arkansas in 2018.
Why should a hotshot quarterback, for instance, get the big bucks when the guys who block for him receive very little or nothing at all? Wouldn’t that to lead to some dissension in the locker room? You’d think so, but I don’t know for sure.
Regardless, the 6-6 Razorbacks will trudge to Memphis with several missing pieces today to meet 6-6 Kansas in the final game of the 2022 season. Coaches will spin this as the first step toward the 2023 season with reserves competing for expanded roles. But isn’t that what spring practice is for?
If you’ve got the money, especially during the holidays with mounting credit card debt, to travel to Memphis, purchase a ticket, and attend the game, have at it. I’ll raise my glass as a toast when I see you on TV dressed in Razorback red or wearing a hogs snout. But I’ve decided to follow the lead of what a lot of others have done and just opt out.