Is Denzel Ward Sitting out the Beginning of the End for the College Bowl System?

I love football but I can tell you this, I have not watched one bowl game this year and I won’t until the college playoffs. What’s my reason? The Bowl games are nothing more than meaningless exhibitions. If you don’t believe me, look at the Cotton Bowl in which Denzel Ward, a cornerback for Ohio State, decided to sit out. Last year, Leonard Fournette and Christian McCaffrey chose to skip their respective bowl game.

What makes this a much bigger deal is that now a player from Ohio State decided that it really wasn’t that important. Just imagine if USC Quarterback Sam Darnold decided to sit out the game? What kind of an uproar would that have caused?

The bowl games are a Joke

The NCAA has taken the importance away from all of the bowl games with the four-team college playoff. It is a good thing because with players concerned more about their futures than a meaningless bowl game, more players will sit out bowl games and the NCAA will be forced to expand the playoffs to crown a true National Champion.

Why don’t players take out insurance policies?

I always hear people say, why don’t the players just insure themselves against injuries? But it’s simply not that easy. The insurance cost is astronomical and is very hard to get a payout from the insurance companies no matter how bad you are hurt. This story about LSU explains it all very well. Insurance companies do not like to payoff in any instance. A court fight for the player will ensue and that will cost the player a ton of money also.

Football teams are a brotherhood?

Yes they are and brothers should have each others backs and to think that Denzel Ward should risk everything he has worked for to play in a meaningless exhibition game is stupid! You want your brother to take care of himself in the end and if Ward had played and torn an ACL, it would have cost him a lot of money and in the end, you wouldn’t want your brother to risk that.

Coaches leave before bowl games

I am not even going to cite all the times this has happened over the last twenty years. People get angry when players decide their future is more important than a meaningless bowl game. Why do coaches get a pass and players get criticized? The coach is doing whats best for their family and so is the player.

Schools DO NOT CARE ABOUT their players!

If you destroy your knee as a freshman and can no longer help the program, in most cases it’s goodbye scholarship! Colleges are the slave owners and the players, black or white, are the slaves. As long as the player serves a purpose to the university, they will be fed and taken care of. As soon as they outlive their usefulness, the university, in most cases, turns their back on players. Look at the scandals at places like Louisville and North Carolina. They only care about their bottom line and how much money they can make off the backs of these players.

Conclusion

The NCAA needs to go to a 16 or 32 team playoff and eliminate all other bowls. Why not, as an incentive for better play, offer to insure the players that are identified as NFL draft picks? We know that will never happen because the NCAA only makes billions of dollars off these players every year. These kids are being exploited and unfortunately, the majority of people don’t seem to care.

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