Kirk Herbstreit and Desmond Howard broke in the new year by being college football’s equivalent of old men yelling at a cloud. During Saturday morning’s “College Gameday” they spoke about how players today don’t love football like players back in their day loved football because of the massive opt-outs you now see in bowl games.
You can check out the clip below but one of the biggest names to opt-out of their bowl game was Notre Dame safety Kyle Hamilton who figures to have his name called very early in the 2022 NFL draft. Hamilton took to Twitter on Sunday morning to respond to the commentary.
Players have more power now and that’s much to the chagrin of some out there.
Kyle Hamilton came to Notre Dame likely to get a great education and develop more as a football player. His greatest window to make money as a football player is now. If he doesn’t want to risk losing what will likely be generational wealth to play in Fiesta Bowl why should he?
I applaud Matt Corral of Ole Miss for playing in last night’s Sugar Bowl. It was his choice and the likely first round pick was unfortunately injured early in the contest. He wanted to play with his team one more time and chose to do so with an unfortunate result.
In applauding Corral’s choice though I feel it’s as equally important to applaud players like Hamilton, Kyren Williams, and plenty of others nationally who made their choices as well, even if they hurt their teams chances at winning a bowl game.
Too often I think these student-athletes are grouped together as being “money hungry” or “in it for the wrong reasons” when ultimately they’re often making the same decision the vast majority of us would make under the same circumstances.