Potential solutions for players sitting out bowl games?

How about this: allow the schools to pay players bonuses for playing in the bowl game. This would void their eligibility (until amateurism is killed as it should be), but what do they care if they are going pro anyway?

Also the solution is really just to pay the players.

Pay the players.  Their paychecks come at the end of the season.  If they don't play in the bowl game, they don't get their last paycheck.

College football as we knew it is in the process of dying. It will still shamble on for a decade or two, but for the large majority of schools, attendance will plummet and interest will wane as the best players sit out games with increasing frequency. Non-blue blood schools will start cutting football because the financial pressures on academic institutions in the debt-plagued years to come will be intense—regular college students will rebel at the idea of institutional support for football draining away money that could go to academics while players routinely refuse to play in games they deem as too unimportant to jeopardize their NFL contracts.

Eventually there will be a small number of big-time programs left, but any pretense of academic involvement by the players will have disappeared entirely, and it will essentially be a minor league followed by fans of those schools, pro scouts and gamblers. The days of intense national interest from coast to coast will be gone. People in the future will look back on what we think are the golden years of football the same way we look back on football of a century ago: quaint, naive, and culturally irrelevant to their lives.

There's a long-term solution that would ensure the continued popularity of college football as an in-person spectator sport, but it's far too radical to ever be seriously considered: the NFL could create a meaningful minor league that would be open to anybody over the age of 18. Talented players who didn't have any real interest in attending college could start earning a paycheck playing a game they love, the way hockey and baseball players have done for many decades.

Inevitably, a large portion of the most talented athletes would be freed from the charade of having to pretend they want to obtain a college degree, just as in hockey and baseball. There would still be people willing to play football for colleges and universities, albeit with an average talent level that would be lower than we've been accustomed to during our lives, but not with the goal of playing professionally. The days of coaches making millions even as assistants would disappear, the huge TV contracts would be a thing of the past, and the vast majority of bowl games would disappear. It would be closer to what football was like during the 1930s or 1940s, when turning professional was something only a tiny percentage of college players even thought about. 

The solution is to pay the players.

Allow players to sign an agent after conference championship weekend. Then the schools can pay a player to play in the bowl game if they want. Then it would be a negotiation between the player and the school. Its kind of like a player is getting an early singing bonus or a college retirement gift (gold watches for everyone!) depending how you look at it. This prevents players from pulling a Bosa, and cuts that off before it becomes a trend. Smaller schools in meaningless bowls wont care, and bigger schools who want to bring in better ratings and feed the NCAA bowl game cash grab will be incentivized to pay star players to play.

As a fan, I always want to see the best players represent the college, regardless of the game. However, if I was in their shoes, I would sit out and not give it a second thought vs. risking injury. The schools make too much money for these bowl games, so I can never see a college turning down an invitation.

I really have no answers and have contributed nothing to this thread. Here's my apology:

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After Jake Butt's injury I am 110% behind any non returning player that decides to sit out the bowl game 

Expand the playoff

I don’t know that there is a solution. Who wants to force them to play?  That’s ridiculous. You can try to entice them, but beyond that? Yeah, no. 

The sad truth is, bowl games dont mean a damn thing.  I knew a guy affiliated with the team years ago.  He told me as much and I never believed it.  I always loved the bowl game, the usual tough competitor for bragging rights against other conferences...but it was like he told me there is no Santa.  He said if the Big Ten title or NC were not on the line, the teams just kind of packed it in.  They barely cared about bowls, only fans like me did.

With the recent trend of players sitting out, I can only think it validates what he told me.  The games mean ja k squat and could compromise their future earnings.  The only ones who care about bowls are the fans and sponsors ($$$).   Just watch it as a glorified exhibition game where nothing matters.

The only solution I can think of is for me to stop caring as much, and I hate it.

Or maybe I could stop caring as much about the players that are sitting out, and care about the ones still on the team.  Still hate it, but I hate it a lot less.  I don't blame them for their choice.  Thank you for being on the team, best of luck in the NFL, but now you're taking yourself off. 

We could focus on the guys who are still on the team. 

I don't agree it's less fun.

I'd rather see more of Jalen Mayfield, Aidan Hutchinson, Ronnie Bell, maybe even a good dose of Joe Milton as well as other young guys.

But I agree, draft eligible players should get a much better/easier insurance policy, I wonder if the NCAA sells enough T-Shirts to underwrite this?

Part of the problem I have with this trend is the hand-waving justification of it.  Everyone in favor claims "this risk isn't worth it", yet where are the numbers to show it?  These guys average X games per year, with Y average snaps per game, for a 2-4 year span or so.  If they haven't shown themselves to be injury-prone up to this point, what is the real harm with one more game?  If the player was still recovering from an injury and not 100%, that might be a different story.  However, aside from people cherry-picking individual cases (a la Jake Butt), this is a bit of an insincere argument.

Provide draft insurance. I think Jake Butt had this and it paid him based on how far he fell in the draft. I'm not sure what criteria were used, but I think that's reasonable.

Sooner than later, game attendance and viewership will suffer if the best players aren't playing.

I do think it's the players choice to play or sit out. But if they choose to sit, I also think they should reimburse the school for a portion of that year's scholarship. They were given certain compensation in exchange for playing football. If they choose not to live up to the original agreement, they're in breach of contract.

Decisions based on economics have economic consequences, both good and bad.

Just cancel the game. Nobody really seems to give a rat's ass.

8 team playoff.

Regular season is just as important that way.

Who cares if players sit out in other bowl games. 

Strength of schedule should mean much more to qualify - not just record - so we get good OOC regular season games too.

The guys that are going to sit out are going to sit out. 

So focus on the backups who want to play.

Bowl season should be "free" from red shirt limits.  Anybody can play during bowl season and it does not count toward the red shirt limits.

I think that a players union — which gives a say to, you know, the folks actually playing the games — would go a long way toward providing clarity on this and a number of other issues: length of schedule, size of playoff, stipends, insurance...

People complain all the time that we can't pay players because it would ruin the spirit of the game and college and blah blah blah.  Then these players finally decide that playing in a meaningless bowl in Tuscon on December 20th so that a mid-level at Raycom can bill half a million in sponsorship probably isn't in their best interests, and we all complain they aren't thinking about our level enjoyment.

Fuck it.  Let guys play as much as they want.  They aren't our indentured servants.  The vast majority of players play though the regular season and then skip a meaningless exhibition.  That's how it should be.

So it's OK to tell a HS senior to skip his last semester of HS to enroll early at his chosen school to start practicing with his college team because it's the next step for him but it's not OK for that same player to make that same choice 3-4 years later for another "next step"?  If the college coaches are encouraging early entry, they better be OK with this trend of skipping out on meaningless bowl games for the NFL.

I don't personally like it but if my coach makes $5 million, the bowl president makes $1 million and you're asking me to risk my chance to get to that financial level and my team's already out of contention? I know what choice I'm making.  Face it, these kids are now taught from age 5 on that it's me, me, me not the team, the team, the team.  That's youth sports in the 2000's.