While college football bowl games are a highly profitable endeavor for the governing body and universities themselves, players have began thinking twice about participating out of their own self interest.
It used to be assumed that every player would suit up for their respective university and give their best effort to help the school take home one of the 40 different bowl game titles. However, this year there is a long list of NFL draft prospects who are not taking the risk.
For example, West Virginia quarterback Will Grier (67.0 completion percentage, 37 touchdown passes, eight interceptions) will not be suiting up for the Camping World Bowl against Syracuse on December 28; Arizona State wide receiver N’Keal Harry (73 receptions, 1088 yards, nine touchdown receptions) ditched the Las Vegas Bowl against Fresno State on December 15; and Iowa tight end Noah Fant (39 receptions, 519 yards, seven touchdown catches) will not play in the Outback Bowl on New Year’s Day against Mississippi State. They are just a few of more than a dozen draft prospects who will not compete in their respective bowl games this season – and they are absolutely making the right decision.
NFL draft prospects need to be healthy and ready to go for the NFL combine in a few months. Why would they want to risk injury in a largely meaningless bowl game? It’s late in the season, fatigue is setting in, and they are not being paid a lucrative salary to compete anyway (just gifts).
Most importantly of all, bowl injuries for an NFL prospect can cost players millions of dollars.
Most notably, Dallas Cowboys linebacker Jaylon Smith tore his ACL and MCL in the first quarter of the Fiesta Bowl in 2016 as a member of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. As a result, he went from being a projected top-five draft pick to being scooped up by the Dallas Cowboys in the second round, 34th overall. Had he been drafted where he was initially projected, he easily would have scored a $20 million contract; instead, he got about $4.5 million in guaranteed money from Dallas, as Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer pointed out.
Say Jaylon Smith went 5th overall. He’d get a fully guaranteed 4-yr, $23.5M deal. Wound up with a 4-yr, $6.5M ($4.5M guar) deal instead.
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) December 19, 2016
While that may be the most prominent example, it’s far from the only time a big-name player has been injured in a bowl game.
Northwestern quarterback Clayton Thorson tore his ACL in the Music City Bowl last season; former Stanford quarterback Keller Chryst tore his ACL in the 2016 Sun Bowl; and in the 2015 TaxSlayer Bowl, former New York Jets quarterback Christian Hackenberg, who has a member of Penn State at the time, left the game with a sprained shoulder.
All of that said, it’s understandable why players would put themselves and their futures first instead of their college teams.
After all, universities receive around $500 million worth of payouts for competing in bowl games thanks to the TV deal and sponsors. Players are not receiving any revenue sharing bonus from it, so the risk outweighs the reward here.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelance writer who has been published with USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.
