It wasn’t long ago playing in a bowl game seemed to mean more than it does today.
I know, playing in bowl games still means a lot to most players and programs, but it used to be a bigger benchmark heading into the season. Obviously reaching a bowl game comes behind the goals of winning a conference championship or beating a rival, but earning a bowl berth seems like it used to be more exciting for a team, especially Group of Five programs whose New Year’s Six or national championship aspirations were slim.
However, with the transfer portal comes a lot of things, and one of them is unfortunately the depreciation of bowl games. One of the reasons for this is that there are so many moving parts within a program immediately following the regular season. This has made preparing for and actually having enough players to play in a bowl game an issue, just as we’ve seen recently with Marshall.
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Following the departure of former head coach Charles Huff and a ton of players, Marshall withdrew from the Independence Bowl just two weeks prior to the game. Marshall’s statement said it withdrew from the contest “after falling below the roster minimum that was deemed medically safe.”
The Thundering Herd were coming off their first-ever Sun Belt Championship and the matchup against AAC champion Army was supposed to be one of the better bowl games outside of the College Football Playoff.
Sure, Louisiana Tech was quickly found as a replacement, but there couldn’t have been a tougher team the Bulldogs will be forced to prepare for on short notice.
I think what’s even more surprising about this situation is that the program that withdrew was on Cloud Nine following its 10-win season and league championship. Surely after such a successful year, there would be enough players who would want to stick around and play, right?
Wrong.
There should be no ill-will toward players who want to transfer or follow their coach to a new program. But it’s unfortunate there aren’t enough players from a conference championship team to field a roster and compete in a postseason game.
In this case, many of the Marshall players wanted to join Huff at Southern Miss. Ten players transferred from Marshall to USM, including dual-threat quarterback and Sun Belt Newcomer of the Year Braylon Braxton. The junior compiled over 2,200 yards and was responsible for 25 touchdowns this season.
Per Rivals, there were a total of 19 players who entered the transfer portal following the news that Huff was leaving.
The ones who are most negatively impacted by this situation, though, are the seniors who were still expecting to play in one final game before their college careers are over. At least they were able to go out with a conference championship.
And whether it’s positive or negative, the impacts trickle down to everybody – from the equipment staff to the bus driver.
If we’ve seen it happen already, we’re likely to see more teams withdrawing from bowl games in the future.
Only, it’s possible those players wanting to continue playing won’t be coming off such a successful run to end the season. Perhaps they’ll be coming off a loss and hope to end their careers with a victory.
Regardless of the situation, G5 schools might be the victims of these types of situations in the future as they lose their coaches to bigger programs, and the dominos start falling with players entering the portal and assistant coaches leaving.
