Lincoln Riley was more than disturbed.
Two years ago, two of Oklahoma’s biggest stars reached out to the team’s then-offensive coordinator and asked him to sit out the Sugar Bowl. Receiver Dede Westbrook and running back Joe Mixon were going to leave the team early to preserve their bodies and begin training for the upcoming NFL draft.
“They told me they thought it was in their best interest not to play in the Sugar Bowl,” Riley said this week. “I had some choice words.”
The smiles on Westbrook and Mixon’s faces weren’t far away.
“They played a joke on me,” said Riley, now the head coach of the Sooners, who are entering their second straight College Football Playoff. “They got me good.”
So far, Oklahoma has been unaffected by a relatively recent trend among draft-eligible NFL prospects: kicking out of the bowl game, leaving the team and beginning draft training before that postseason prize.
“That hasn’t happened here,” Riley said. For obvious reasons, of course, because no player — so far — has left a College Football Playoff team with a title on the line.
“That doesn’t mean we’ll never have to go through this.”
As for the impact on the random Gasparilla-Quick Lane-Cheez-It game? There was outrage in some quarters two years ago when this trend began. Two injured star backs — Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey and LSU’s Leonard Fournette — skipped bowl games to rehab and begin NFL training.
This decision broke with tradition. Some were accused of disloyalty. Even today, some challenge such decisions.
“I probably would never do that,” said Risner, a fifth-year All-American guard at Kansas State. “At the same time, I don’t judge guys who do it because I totally understand why. That phrase is one of the hottest topics in college football.”
It’s a hot topic that has become more or less accepted. There are at least 13 players to date who have declared for the draft and ended their college careers prematurely.
If you haven’t noticed, there’s a reason: The outcry over McCaffrey and Fournette two years ago has all but died down.
“A player here, a player there?” said Wright Waters, executive director of the Football Bowl Association. “God bless them. You know what? I have no problem with that.”
On the other hand, Bryan Fischer, a lawyer based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, seems prescient. Twenty-one months ago, he predicted the current increase in early retirements.
“What you’ve seen is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Fisher, who works with college players to check insurance before the draft. “You’re going to see a lot of kids skip out.”
For better or for worse.
“You’re torn because you’re kind of half the parent, you see the individual side of it,” Riley said. “You’re also the head coach. You know how important it is to win bowl games and finish the year strong and create memories for these guys that they’ll never see again.”
If there’s one thing coaches can’t live without, it’s control, and specifically roster control. That’s why we’ve seen so much consternation in the transfer reform process. It was coaches who invented the term “free agency” at a time when transfer reform was about something much less important.
It is therefore not surprising that the players, in this specific case, only think of themselves.
“Will it impact (bowls) in this day and age where people are looking for a reason not to go instead of going? Yes,” Waters said. “But at the end of the day, bowls have been impacted by coaches leaving for years. If we talk about leadership and setting an example, what’s the example when a coach leaves? What’s the difference when kids leave? It’s kind of hard to throw stones at kids when the people we trust to lead them are doing the same thing.”
The list of people who have exited the market this year is the most talented we’ve seen since this trend began.
Ohio State defensive end Nick Bosa may have been the Buckeyes’ best player this season. We’ll never know because Bosa never returned after a muscle injury suffered in Week 3 against TCU. He underwent surgery. In mid-October, the team confirmed that Bosa would not be back. In the end, Bosa balanced the riches of possibly being the No. 1 overall pick (and the $30 million or more contract that would come with it) against returning for a few games at the end of the season.
Arizona State’s N’Keal Harry is an All-American receiver. The 6-foot-4, 210-pound specimen has caught the most balls of any Sun Devils receiver over three seasons. “He’s still ready for the next level,” coach Herm Edwards told ESPN. That’s a better assessment than tearing up his knee in the Las Vegas Bowl.
Houston defensive lineman Ed Oliver has been limited by a series of injuries. At his best, Oliver was an All-American, the youngest Outland winner and a preseason Heisman Trophy candidate. Why risk top-10 money by playing in the Armed Forces Bowl?
West Virginia’s Will Grier is the first major quarterback to retire before his team’s bowl game. Who can blame him? A chance at a first-round draft pick or an unforgettable experience playing in the Camping World Bowl?
“The only thing I worry about for these kids is whether they’ll look back 30 or 40 years from now and say, ‘I wish I had a chance to play in that bowl game and I didn’t,’” Riley said. “I know we all grew up in different times. I don’t blame them, but I also hope they keep in perspective where they’re playing and how fortunate they are to play for great programs.”
“Similarly,” Waters countered, “there are kids who could improve their draft status by giving the pros another look at them and playing against competition in a different part of the country that they’ve been exposed to all year.”
There have been two career-changing injuries recently that seem to have changed the conversation.
Michigan tight end Jake Butt suffered a torn ACL in the 2016 Orange Bowl. He went from a first-round projection to a fifth-round pick.
Notre Dame linebacker Jaylon Smith suffered a serious knee injury in the 2016 Fiesta Bowl, costing him about $20 million in the first round. Smith was ultimately selected in the second round, but was placed on injured reserve by the Dallas Cowboys during his rookie season. He later collected $700,000 by cashing in a draft-loss insurance policy, which is well below that $20 million.
“It’s unreal,” said Ronnie Kaymore, CEO of Kaymore Sports Risk Management and Consulting, a New Jersey-based firm. “This is all based on the Jaylon Smith scenario. The kid did get paid out on his insurance, but he lost way more than he got paid out on. I don’t know what schools are going to do about it. For most schools, this is going to be a problem.”
This trend is obviously influenced by agents, families and advisors. Risner is a close friend of McCaffrey, having grown up with the Carolina Panthers star in Colorado.
“When Christian McCaffrey says, ‘I could have torn my ACL (playing in a bowl game), look at me now. I’m the face of the program,'” Risner said. “You can call them disloyal. You can call them whatever you want, but I think that’s kind of being smart.”
This trend is also influenced by the excessive number of bowl games, 40 at last count. In other words, there would be no bowls to avoid if there weren’t so many of them.
“I’ve been contacted by over 500 NFL agents,” Risner said. “I have no idea how they got a hold of me. I’ve never given out my information.”
Risner never had to make that decision. In his and coach Bill Snyder’s final season, the Wildcats finished 5-7.
“I would play (in the bowl game) because I believe deeply in God’s plan. This is God’s plan for me, this game of football,” Risner added. “At the same time, I’m not one to judge or even get mad at these guys who decide not to play in the bowl game because they know the impact they’re about to have.”
