With Fournette and McCaffrey going in the top eight picks last night, there’s your answer to the question I raised the other day.
Meaningless is as meaningless does, boys.
- Bloviation for the Dawgnation
-
Quote Of The Day
-
“We remember the Sugar Bowl, I think it my junior year of high school, we let Alabama beat us twice,” Brinson said of a team that also lost to the Crimson Tide in the SEC Championship game. “We’re not letting Alabama beat us twice. In the Sugar Bowl in 2018, they… thought they should have been in the playoffs and lost to Texas.” -- AB-H, 12/27/23
Search
Categories
Archives
Blogroll (ND)
- 82 Sluggo Win
- And The Valley Shook
- Banner Society
- Black Heart Gold Pants
- Black Shoe Diaries
- Blatant Homerism
- Braves & Birds
- Brophy Football
- College Football Talk
- EDSBS
- Eleven Warriors
- Lost Angeles
- MGoBlog
- RazorBloggers Network
- Rock M Nation
- Rocky Top Talk
- Saturday Down South
- Saturday Tradition
- Shakin The Southland
- Smart Football
- Team Speed Kills
- The National Championship Issue
- The Wizard of Odds
- Tide Bits
Dawg Blogs
Dawg Links
Media Links
Stats/Info Links
- All-Time Division 1-A CFB Standings
- American College Football
- American College Football – Rankings
- cfbstats.com
- College Football at Sports-Reference.com
- College Football by the Numbers
- College Football Data Warehouse
- College Football Recruiting Map
- College Nicknames
- Football Outsiders – College
- Football Study Hall
- GBE College Football Ratings
- MapGameDay.com
- NCAA Division I Football Statistics
- SEC Statistics
- Statistically Speaking
- Strangestbrew's College Football Schedulizer
- The Helmet Project
- Varsity Numbers
Useful Links
Time, time…
GATA
Blog Stats
- 73,808,024 hits
Get The Picture · Bloviation for the Dawgnation
Get The Picture 
It also reflects a return to the days where RBs were taken in later rounds and devalued. Gurley had been the exception in recent years but Chubb and Michel have a chance to get paid for their hard work and talent next season. Hoping for a safe, and productive 2017 for those two fine gentlemen.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Perhaps Ezekiel Elliot being taken 4th last year and rushing for 1600+ had something to do with GMs reconsidering the potential draft value of the RB position.
LikeLike
That said, if #27 and #1 have solid seasons and stay healthy and we wind up in the Outback bowl… I don’t know that I want to see either of them suit up. However, considering they both could have jumped this year and decided to return, I think they would play.
LikeLike
By my count, all but two games last year were meaningless. If you ain’t first, you’re last. Woo!
LikeLike
This could really change college football. Who cares about some meaningless bowl. But what if Chubb or Sony or both look really great the first 3 or 4 games this year. Gain 150 – 200 yards per game. Why wouldn’t they just leave the team, sign with an agent and wait for draft day? As a Ga fan I would hate it, but I’m not the one who might lose millions by continuing to play.
LikeLike
It will happen, sooner rather than later.
LikeLike
Absolutely. More and more, NFL GM’s actually want college RB’s to sit out and/or play as little as possible to prevent wear and tear. The average shelf life of an NFL RB is something like 41 months, and these days GM’s look closely at your number of carries and such as a part of some wear and tear algorithm they use.
With continued pressure from the NFL to actually not play, more and more you’re going to see RB’s either sitting out their junior year or playing in limited action only.
LikeLike
My exact attitude. I bear no ill will for somebody looking out to take care of his family for life.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not even sure I would hate it as a Georgia fan. Colleges could easily change the decision process by allowing the players to earn money while still in college.
LikeLiked by 2 people
or allow colleges to buy insurance for them based upon projected value.
LikeLike
I doubt you can take an insurance policy to walmart and buy clothes and food for your family.
LikeLike
I think my favorite response about the scholarship is that a player can’t take it down to Kroger and buy food with it.
LikeLike
It worked out very well for Dez Bryant.
LikeLike
A Georgia running back started this trend….he was mentioned on here just a few days ago.
LikeLike
Are you talking about this as starting the trend?
LikeLike
No, but that helped too. I don’t blame the kids.
LikeLike
I’m not sure the a guy being the 3rd overall pick is incentive to sit out. You’d need an example where an injury hurt a player’s stock.
LikeLike
Gurley wasn’t the 3rd overall pick. He was #10 and probably would have been in the top 5 if he had been healthy. He had nothing to prove by coming back after the McGarity suspension. He came back and left it all on the line. He’s a DGD.
LikeLike
You’re right. I am dummy. I don’t know why I had it in my head he went 3rd, maybe that was the projection at one point. I do wonder if he’d have been a top 5 pick. Maybe the Raiders would have taken him at 4. I’m not sure anyone else before the Rams would have gone with a running back.
LikeLike
He may not have gone earlier, but without the injury, teams earlier on the clock probably would have taken a 2nd look at him. I would take a healthy Gurley over Fournette or McCaffrey any day of the week.
LikeLike
The flip side to this argument is Solomon Thomas. Granted, he was a sure fire first rounder before his bowl game. However, he made himself a couple extra million with his play during his bowl game. He definitely improved his stock.
LikeLike
I really doubt that his bowl performance made much difference.
LikeLike
Except that it did.
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000772773/article/ask-5-which-player-helped-nfl-draft-stock-most-in-bowl-game
LikeLike
He was playing against UNC 2nd and 3rd stringers (1st string LT, LG, and C out for that game). Hard to believe that impressed scouts that much
LikeLike
Unless you are playing for a national championship, bowl games are pointless. They are fun for fans and players get a good trip and swag, but they are exhibition games. I would always rather win than lose but they just don’t matter.
Fournette and McCaffery had nothing left to to prove. Why get hurt in a meaningless game with millions sitting on the table?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Caveat: Bowl games give a team 15 extra practices. That is huge for the following year.
LikeLike
My “Give a Damn About College Football Meter” is at an all-time low. Nearing zero.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yep, I just leaked a little more enthusiasm myself.
And no, I don’t blame the players, but rather a system that provides that type of motivation.
LikeLike
Seconded.
But the excitement of pregame tailgating keeps me enduring traffic, the venue not so much.
LikeLike
As others have said, why risk your future over a pointless game? (assuming not a playoff game).
Maybe if the bowl games paid players?
LikeLike
And this is what college football has become in the 21st century. 3 playoff games have rendered all of the bowl games meaningless as well as the bulk of the regular season when your team is “out of it”. Are we going to see a trend where once a team is out of contention for the CFB the guys who are projected to be high draft picks shut it down? What is going to happen when good old State U is out of the playoff picture but still is 7-3 and has a chance to beat the instate or conference rival and the star RB or WR says they aren’t playing in a meaningless game?
CFB is inching closer and closer to the tipping point where the long time fan just won’t give a damn anymore and quit watching.
LikeLike
It’s been trending this way for a long time and an extended playoff will probably be the final nail in the coffin. What I can’t wrap my head around is why so many people get offended that the players dare act like professionals when everybody else around them does and they weren’t the ones that professionalized everything about the sport.
LikeLike
Conference Titles still mean something, to the fans and the kids. Rivalry games mean something too…we are talking about a couple of kids who chose to not play in a meaningless bowl game. Most bowl’s have been meaningless for a while.
LikeLike
But that’s your definition of “meaningless”. To a kid from New Jersey that knows zero about Georgia football history, a game against some engineering school in Atlanta that he’s maybe never heard of may be meaningless. (I just used us as an example. Each school has their own type games.) That’s the slippery slope.
And I don’t blame the kids. The system is fucked.
LikeLike
All of the games are pointless in the grand scheme of things, so why play at all?
LikeLike
You are right, of you use the logic above. What value does a playoff game matter versus other bowls? A $3K dollar ring. or $10K ring, pales in comparison to career earnings for top players going down the drain. Why play any of the season indeed? (And every one forgets, the top players are allowed by the NCAA to get insurance coverage, they aren’t totally exposed.) As I said before, just give us the student athlete and drop the rest of them.
LikeLike
I really don’t have a lot of heartburn one way or another. NFL teams bench starting QBs as they approach the playoffs. We bench the starters against cupcake teams (when they are not Nich St). Meh. Much ado about nothing.
LikeLike