Opting Out: College football players shouldn’t be allowed to opt-out of bowl games

Over 900 fully healthy college football players opted out of bowl games in 2023.

In college football, there are over 40 postseason bowl games. Each bowl eligible team must have six or more wins to qualify. Despite teams working hard to become bowl eligible, many starting players tend to opt out of bowl games.

College football players shouldn’t be allowed to opt-out of bowl games. Some players just could be foregoing their eligibility to prepare for the NFL Draft. But, most players opt-out of bowl games just so they can enter the transfer portal and play for another team next season. 

The majority of players who opt-out are starters who are essential to their team’s success. So when they leave, the team cannot have the same success they did in the regular season.

That’s what happened to the Florida State football team. The Seminoles went undefeated in the regular season and won the Atlantic Coast Conference championship. However, they were left out of the four team college football playoff after their starting quarterback, Jordan Travis, got injured in Week 12 of the season. The Seminoles were instead selected for the Orange Bowl against the University of Georgia. 

The game should have been very competitive considering both teams were ranked very high with Florida State at number five and Georgia at number six. Unfortunately, Florida State had 29 opt-outs enter the transfer portal. This left Florida State with what was basically a JV football team. Because of this Georgia won the game 63-3. This was the biggest blowout in over a hundred years of bowl game history. As a comparison, Georgia had only 19 opt-outs. Florida State might not have been able to beat Georgia but they would have at least been able to be competitive if they had more of their starting players.

This was not the only game that was affected negatively by opt-outs. The Cotton Bowl between Mizzou and Ohio State should’ve been a great game, both teams were ranked in the top 10. Instead, the game ended with a 14-3 win for Mizzou. The reason for the total lack of offense, especially from Ohio State, was opt-outs. The lack of scoring was even more surprising because Ohio State and Mizzou are both among the top offensive teams in College Football.

The Ohio State Buckeyes starting quarterback Kyle McCord transferred to Syracuse before the game. Ohio State also lost its star wide receiver and future NFL first rounder Marvin Harrison Jr. who opted out to prepare for the draft. Ohio State lost nine other offensive players which is likely the reason the offense was so bad. If Kyle McCord had played in the game Ohio State would have won. Mizzou’s offense was bad as well up until the 4th quarter, if Ohio State could have mustered any offense at all, they would have won the game easily.

Smaller bowl games suffer from opt-outs as well. North Carolina’s quarterback Drake Maye – a projected top five NFL Draft pick – opted out of the Duke’s Mayo Bowl. As a result of this North Carolina was upset by West Virginia, if Maye had played North Carolina wouldn’t have looked as confused and listless as they did against West Virginia. 

When players opt out of bowl games to transfer, teams can lose more than half of their starters. If this wasn’t allowed, bowl games wouldn’t be such tedious blowouts. Instead, they would be actual competitive games between both team’s starters. It doesn’t make sense that players can leave their team and join a new one before the season even ends. If rules were in place to prevent this, bowl seasons like this one would feel less disappointing.

We caught a glimpse of what that would look like in this year’s Rose and Sugar Bowls. Both bowls were part of the college football playoff. Which meant all four teams would have most of their starting players because they have the opportunity to play for a championship. The games were very fun to watch, unlike basically every other bowl game up to that point. The Sugar Bowl and the Rose Bowl showed that bowl games can still be fun if enough starters are playing in them. 

Bowl games should be fun more than anything, and when teams are playing their backups they’re anything but.