No. I don't agree. They play about that many games in high school. They play about 15-16 games in all other divisions of college football. They play 18 games or so in the NFL. Why is bigtime college football the ONLY level of football at which some people want to claim the players just can't take the wear and tear? Clearly, that's just an excuse
Next point. NFL teams have 49 man rosters. Each Division I (yes I use the old terms) program gets 85 scholarships. They have more than enough personnel to accommodate 16 games. If not, then give back the 10 extra scholarships the NCAA took away in the late 80s and let them have 95 scholarships again.
The thing is, without a real playoff, one loss can pretty much doom a team from consideration for a National Championship. Now it can be said at least CFB probably is the best for rewarding a team for their overall season, instead of the team that got hot at the right time winning the Championship.
Look at what happened with the recent College World Series with Ole Miss winning it, the perfect example of a team that had a mediocre season who got hot at the right time. Do we want that also in College Football?
“They play about that many games in high school. They play about 15-16 games in all other divisions of college football.”
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Top shelf, highly sought-after, early round predicted draft pick “D-1” players at the end of their years if NCAA eligibility are now routinely declining to play in FCS playoff games or major bowl games.
To you, these players may seem like primadonnas. But if and when you look at their situation objectively, I’m sure you will agree that they see no point in descending back into the meatgrinder I have been discussing, because, in point of fact, there is nothing for them to gain, so almost all of them give their teammates and coaches and student body and alumni the kiss-off, as they privately low-key prepare for the NFL Pre-Draft Scouting Combine, or even their own private workouts to which NFL scouts are invited. Their “not quite as good” but still draft-quality teammates would doubtlessly do the exact same thing and protect their bodies from potential career-ending injuries if they could get away with doing so, but they can’t, because they continue to need those last one, two or three post-season games, and the national television broacast time associated with those games, to try to make last-minute upward moves in the pre-draft rankings, to maybe get signed in the second round instead of the third, or maybe move up from the fourth to the third, thereby to secure the higher signing bonuses associated with those earlier draft rounds. They roll the dice, hoping not to pay the price during their teams’ upcoming bowl games.
“Why is bigtime college football the ONLY level of football at which some people want to claim the players just can’t take the wear and tear? Clearly, that’s just an excuse”
Bigtime college football ends too many fine student-athletes’ prospects for professional success. And for what truly higher purpose?
A balance must be struck, and it does not include adding additional win-or-go-home games to a college football season that is already long enough. There is no law that requires colleges to put the finishing touches on an elite few players’ respective skill sets at the expense of ten or twenty times their number in terms of the student-athletes who are not yet ready for NFL speed and violence (few really are, even at the elite level). Once again, the elite players who are arguably ready for the transition from college to pro already know this fact, and respond by getting the heck out of dodge as soon as they get the chance, much to their respective AD’s and Head Coach’s consternation. They know their schools will consider the career-ending injuries that some of their number will inevitably suffer (yes, including gruesome concussions, something nobody can possibly train enough to avoid when their number comes up) as just another broken egg necessary to preserve the National Championship omelette manufacturing line.
I am not advocating hobbling the sport at the college level. Rather, I am suggesting that we should not seek to definitively separate the wheat from the chaff come the annual bowl season. The players should not be burdened in that way.