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Joel AndersonESPN
On the eve of the day that Ohio State entered Happy Valley's crucible, Nick Bosa expressed frustration with the building after being forced to leave the match at Penn State with an injury.
"I wish more than anything to be with my brothers tomorrow," Bosa said on Twitter, accompanied by an 18-second dumb video showing him pointing to a bracelet bearing the inscriptions "# 97" and "G Pop".
Bosa missed that match and the next two, and said earlier this week that he was going to miss the rest this fall. Ohio State has announced that Bosa will retire from school and focus on the NFL Draft, where he is a powerful first-choice contender, according to a number of fictitious projects.
It's an almost unprecedented gesture of recent memory: a leading university football player has chosen to get off to a good start in NFL preparation instead of spending the last few months trying to regain health in the hope to help his undefeated team compete for a national championship.
Bosa's father told Sports Illustrated that the decision was not a power play, but simply a recognition that it was not possible to fully recover from the heart injury. suffered by his son with this type of precipitous chronology. Bosa could theoretically have been ready for the semi-finals of the university football game in late December, but his health and future are a priority, said John Bosa.
Three other players from Alabama enter Todd McShay's updated ranking of top NFL draft candidates, including the unconventional star, Deionte Thompson.
Ohio State defensive end Nick Bosa, All-American in 2017 and Big Ten defensive lineman of the year, will retire from school and focus on rehabilitating a front injury. the NFL draft.
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"There are deadlines for injuries," he told SI, "then deadlines for an elite smuggler."
But in the ongoing struggle for more power of players in a sport where the NCAA and its member institutions have rigged the game and put the money in their favor, it is becoming increasingly obvious that Bosa and the best players, the work itself, have more weight than they could have. suspected.
Indeed, a change of culture may already be in progress.
In another day, not so long ago, it could have been widely considered selfish behavior. And to be sure, if you look long enough on Twitter or listen to enough spoken radio, you'll find talking heads and fans who believe that Bosa has gone the loose way and abandoned his aforementioned brothers.
But today, we are even football fans! – know for a large part that it is an indefensible position. Or at least we should.
A few years ago, Leonard Fournette found it necessary to defend himself (he posted a deleted picture on Instagram with his young daughter, saying "only person to whom I owe something" too (sic) " for deciding not to play Citrus Bowl to recover from an ankle injury and to focus on the NFL draft in 2017.
The early entry of Fournette and Christian McCaffrey earlier than usual in this project paved the way for several other players to do the same the following year. That included the former Buckeyes teammate, Denzel Ward, who was not injured but who had simply missed the Cotton Bowl because he did not want to risk having one.
It is hard to imagine that this did not happen, for example, Ed Oliver of Houston, who was last seen fighting a triple team of offensive linemen in a season likely to end in a baseball game. Or Stanford's Bryce Love, who missed two wounded matches after a disappointing year, while he was running for over 2,000 yards and was the finalist for Heisman. Or again Rashan Gary of Michigan, another anticipated senior player who has missed the last two games due to a shoulder injury.
At this point, Oliver has nothing to prove in college while Love and Gary put their health at risk only for NFL teams and evaluators to call them "injured" and penalize them. a few places in the repechage. Playing hurt would probably only hurt them.
The NFL also showed that it could remarkably forgive players deemed insufficiently focused on the team: in the 2017 draft, Fournette was ranked 4th in the Jacksonville Jaguars and McCaffrey was selected four times later for the Carolina Panthers. This year, Ward went No. 4 to the Cleveland Browns.
If some of them had knee injuries like Jaylon Smith in Notre Dame's last game – the Fiesta Bowl – before the 2016 draft, they were probably expecting a steep drop in the second turn, just like Smith.
Bosa knew it and the wind had turned slightly in favor of the players. It does not hurt either that his coach, Urban Meyer, has not really covered himself with glory in recent months and can not say more about Bosa's release.
Already this year, we have seen several players – with varying perspectives of the NFL to varying degrees – demonstrate flexibility that would have seemed unknown until recently. Instead, they largely met with shrugs.
Houston, Oliver, made the unusual, if not unprecedented, decision to declare in the spring that his next academic season would be his last. It was not that leaving early was a surprise, it was that he controlled his future so well that he did not feel obliged to consult the coaching staff.
Jalen Hurts has publicly challenged Nick Saban in a way that has shocked many former Saban players this summer, claiming that no Alabama coaching staff member had spoken to him at amid a moving battle for the quarterback position.
And more particularly, Kelly Bryant took advantage of a new NCAA redshirt rule and announced that he was considering leaving his undefeated team rather than sitting behind the rookie who flew over the depth chart. . Even two years ago, Bryant might have been ashamed to stay or be criticized for weeks. Clemson coach, Dabo Swinney, kept his promises and the university press cycle in football quickly turned to speculation about Bryant's future.
It was shocking to see Saban, Swinney and Meyer, some of the most powerful and wealthy men in their sport (or any other sport, really), unable to exert their substantial influence on their players, from simple students whose only exchange is the work force. These coaches were all forced, with their teeth clenched, to stay out of the way and give the players power.
They also realize that this could be the beginning. Meyer, seemingly pained just hours after the announcement of Bosa, acknowledged him at the teleconference of Big Ten coaches.
"It's just something you have to manage and go ahead, just like the first entries in the rough draft," Meyer said. "It just happens."
At the end of the day, Bosa's name was removed from the list of players. Just like that, he was an old Buckeye and Meyer was forced to advance.
Now, even the biggest winners in the game may have to get used to losing.
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