Christian McCaffrey, Others Skipping Bowl Games

zoogs said:
Mavric said:
Yeah, that's not the case. You're straining the definition of "team" to suit your argument. If you have some sort of group project then it would be somewhat applicable. But even then if you quit doing your part of the project you're going to get a failing grade which hurts you. This doesn't hurt the players passing on the bowl game, it helps them.
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I think I'm being completely consistent. You are the one making an analogy from football teams to other kinds of teams.
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You are the one who did that.

zoogs said:
If the latter holds, we should be enormously happy and well-wishing for *any* player who decides to focus on their post-college career. Whether that means walking away and focusing on their biology research or walking away and focusing on their NFL training.
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zoogs said:
No, there's no difference. There are 100+ people on your team who are affected if you decide to quit and do biology research, or focus on your accounting degree, or anything other than be a part of your college ball team.

McCaffrey happens to have his eyes set on the NFL. A college junior (or senior) might just as well say it's been fun, but I want to get a PhD and need to go prepare for that now.
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zoogs said:
You're arguing that quitting a football team hurts the team more than quitting something else (which doesn't have to be a team of any kind). I find this argument immaterial. I agree that Stanford probably will fare worse in the Sun Bowl without him.

Fundamentally the question is: are we happy for students to concentrate on their careers, or do we expect them to fulfill a duty to us as entertainment providers?

Actually, Mav, I'm not quite sure what we're arguing about anymore. If we agree that this helps the players passing on the bowl game, what's the issue? Good thing, right?
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No, I'm not necessarily arguing that quitting the football team hurts more. I'm saying it's not really an analogous situation. A lot of the time a student choosing to focus on their career is only affecting themselves so there aren't any extenuating circumstance to consider. If they were involved in some sort of group project, it would have an effect on others but that would also have a detrimental effect on the individual - i.e., getting a poor grade on that project. In this case, there is no down-side for the players to make this decision. But it still does have some detrimental effect on the rest of the team.

 
I see. You're saying these are not really analogous, and I'd agree:

A: Student quitting College Football to focus on career

B: Student quitting something else to focus on career

This is the comparison I'm making, however:

A: Student quitting College Football to focus on Professional Football

B: Student quitting College Football to focus on any other profession

And I'd argue that there's really no difference in these two scenarios, except in most cases not quitting CFB aligns well with focusing on a pro career.

Ah -- when I said, "there are 100+ people on your team affected", I mean there are 100+ football players affected when one of them decides to go and study biology instead [on a research "team" or not]. I see the misunderstanding there.

I see a college football team as a collection of 100-some players with an entire gamut of different, changing goals, who will for the most part support one another in pursuing them wherever that may lead. I can see how by design, fans or administrators or coaches may have a different perspective, and that is where the conundrum lies.

 
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Gotcha. I guess I didn't catch that you were still talking about football players when you were mentioning other careers. I thought you were talking about the general student population. I would agree that there's really no difference there (other than the paycheck, probably
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I guess I haven't heard of any doing that, at least not skipping a bowl game to do that. If they did, I'd have the same opinion.

 
I'm not even saying I blame them for skipping the bowl game. I think it's a pretty small chance of really getting hurt but if you happen to be unlucky, it would make a difference.

But I still think it's not a good look and I wouldn't blame his teammates if they were angry or disappointed.

And I don't really buy the "meaningless game" line. It's your team. You play the games your team does. If you're going to start skipping "meaningless games", why didn't he skip the Rice game? Even the Cal game didn't really have any bearing on their season. Where do you draw the line? (Not saying that zoogs is making this argument, just my comments on others takes.)

 
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Did the team give him a scholarship to play and he accepted that scholarship along with all the glory of being on the team?

 
There will probably be players who skip an entire season. I mean, why not. In most cases, players will probably need to keep playing to keep their NFL resume strong, but there could be exceptions. I think I've heard Fournette mentioned as one, but he went ahead with the season.

There's some difference between choosing when to walk away and quitting/coming back on a game-by-game basis. Easier to see that not being able to fly, but you never know.

If being on the team ceases to align with their goals, they should make a change.

Overall, I see it as probably one of the many natural oddities that arise from the oddity that big-time college sports is to begin with. How do we make demands of people we don't care about and aren't in any way under our employ?

 
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To me, there is a HUGE difference between:

A) Playing the entire season with the team, you are a major part of the team and their success but when it comes down to the last game to finish it off on a high note, you say.......naaaaa......I'm out.

and,

B) Informing the team way before the season that you are not going to be a part of the program anymore.

 
Not that I believe universities need any more power or leverage over student athletes, but I wonder if universities or the NCAA will try to implement any safeguards to try and prevent players from skipping bowl games. I don't know what those would be, but players doing this could easily cause a dip in revenues, TV ratings, etc.

It reminds me of the Jadeveon Clowney fiasco from a few years ago at South Carolina. Spurrier planted the seed that Clowney didn't "want" to play, and the national narrative was that Clowney was feigning injury with an NFL future in the forecast. I imagine the university and NCAA believe those players owe it to play every single game possible, even bowl games, because of their scholarship agreements.

 
Stumpy1 said:
I think a rule should be implemented that only Seniors should be able to skip bowl games.
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Why? If he is going pro, why shouldn't he be allowed to not play in the bowl game. He won't be doing anything with the school/team the following semester/quarter.

 
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