And so it begins - the NFL Draft opt-outs from bowl season are heating up

Hopefully the Detroit Lions can draft 7-8 defensive guys     Looks like a ton of good ones this year 

Bigger long-term impact will be the further collapse of college football into power 4 and BCS playoff while the rest of college sports teams wither on the vine.  

The bowls are a left over from a bygone age, made meaningless by the 4 team playoff. 

They don't make any sense anymore, nor any money.

Has anyone seen the actual attendance and profit from these games? Not pretty. Incredible then they can still find any sponsors. The games are meaningless without the star players.

What's always been needed is a 16 team playoff including conference champions and a set of at-large teams - i.e. conference titles for banners, bragging rights and pride, then 4 more exhibition games of significance/import for the players, teams and coaches to decide ultimate champion that NFL scouts can and will attend. 

They should adjust the bowl matchups in real time as the opt-outs are happening.

You're preparing for a NY6 matchup versus another top 10 opponent, bam...3 guys go to the portal and now you're looking at the #4 team from the Big XII in the Pop Tart Bowl.

Oddly, I think I'm pro opt out: in this new age a team's goal is to use the season to make the playoffs (unless you are a member of the birth right club). 

Once out of the playoffs, the real value of a bowl is the extra practices and developing your team for next year. Why play the guys who won't be there for the next season? 

Mizzou is already favored -2.5.  Going to be a lot of other state backups.

Bowls are going to go the way of the NFL all star game.  

That's a lot of projected first rounders with no gold pants.

JT Tuimoloau has gotten a first round grade?!? Tuimoloau has been AWOL during both games against UM. His claim to fame is the All World game he had against Penn State last season. Otherwise he has been very pedestrian.

It’s ok for bowl games to be all about extra practices and an extra game for next year’s starters, there’s still a benefit of having them even if players opt out

The biggest problem is that for any non-playoff bowl that doesn’t involve a top team is that you aren’t really watching a game that’ll pit two teams from the current year because of opt-outs and transfers. You are seeing more of a possible future game between the two teams that possibly could give you insight into how good a team might be for the next season. OSU vs. Missouri is a prime example.
 

The lower bowls, however should be, in theory, just about as competitive as they’ve always been, which makes some of those games pretty good. As a CFB fan in general that makes them more watchable than the ny6 non-playoff bowls. 

I assume both UGA and OSU will have most of their big names opt out pretty soon; if I'm Harrison and Egbuka I'm not dying to play against a mediocre SEC team while trying to catch balls thrown by a backup QB in his first start of his career. 

I don't blame guys for wanting to leave - these are exhibition contests that mostly make money for a bunch of old men in suits and shitty insurance companies that just run more ads during games.  These guys all played hard during the regular season and so if they want to skip this game I'm good with it.  Also, it'll give younger guys a chance to play against a good opponent and kick off the next stage of their careers. 

And? These games don’t matter to the players because they aren’t for a championship. They aren’t opting out of games where they have the chance to be National Champions. They’re opting out of advertisements for companies and tourism boosts for cities. I am 100% happy we are entering a time where there’s an actual expanded playoffs like other sports and that young professionals to be don’t have to feel pressured into playing in meaningless bowl games that are rally more for fans. 
 

This makes it great for younger players to get a head start on showing their skills for next fall. Look at what JSN did in the Rose Bowl the year before returning to OSU.

What is worse is having 7th year guys like Cam Rising continue to play thanks to the overcorrection of covid year rules. If a dude plays more than 45-48 college games and still seeks an extra year, that’s just ludicrous. 

Those mocks are a joke.  They always overweight players from name schools.  Stover is clearly not the top TE, and I would be surprised if he went in the first round.  Ditto Egbuka, who seems pretty good, but not in the Wilson/Olave/Harrison range.

Since I identify as a geezer I will start with...  now get off my lawn!!!

But seriously, this was the only obvious result as soon as the sport moved away from the old bowl structure.  The bowls only existed as a reward for the better teams and specifically for conference champions (why was the 73 vote so devastating?  because only one team from the Big ten went to a bowl)  I like to joke that the only reason there is a Rose Bowl football game is that chariot racing didn't sell out in 1916.  The game was just a small part of the larger Tournament of Roses event.  There was a community involvement much bigger than the sport.  Most of the bowls had that.  Is there still a King Orange Jamboree parade in Miami?  I have no idea, but I used to watch it.  What is really dismaying is here in Tucson they were building the Arizona/Nova bowl into a real community event that brought people here and did good things for agencies in the area.  That will be going away with this new structure.

The fact of the matter is when you talk about money in the sport it isn't paying the players or coaches or even the funds generated to the schools, it is the gambling money which is more closely tied to the TV revenue that most want to admit.  There is no allegiance to anything other than the bottom line so the destruction of things like conference play and rivals based on archaic things like the Little Brown Jug and Floyd of Roseville is an irrelevance.  Joel Klatt had it right during THE GAME when he observed that this would be the last time that it was played with anything nearly as important on the line.  Same thing with the Rose Bowl this year.  One of the reasons I am going.  It will be probably the last time it has any meaning different from other post season games.  Things like the marching band in the parade alumni groups traveling, hell the students who plan how to get to the game.  With a potential three game post season how many students have the time and money to attend.   I really see this as the destruction of a sport that has brought me a great deal of enjoyment throughout my life, and I feel sorry for those in school now and in the future as they will never experience the type of connection that most of those on this site did.

Sorry for this rant, and let this ole dinosaur crawl off to his cave and go extinct.

in the future, bowl games will be for bubble teams not playoff teams.  

Ask Jake Butt if he wishes if he did or not and you'll know why they are

Apparently my osu fan brother in law thinks Harrison won't declare for the draft because in his words "His dad was an NFL receiver. he doesn't need the money because he's already rich". The Copium factories are still working overtime in Ohio.

To many bowls and with added games during season much easier to make.  When the season was 10 or 11 games you had to win 6. Had to be over 500. Now you have 12 games to get to 6 wins and usually 3-4 are cupcake games. 

Plus the fact how spoiled the kids are with swag and all the tournaments they go to in b highschool they already been to Florida, Texas. California.  

I think they should get rid of over 80% of bowl games. Have the 12 team playoffs for super conferences  and 12 team playoff for group of 5 teams.  

It's easy enough for d2 and d3 to have playoffs every year.