More college football players are 'opting in' to bowl games, including at BYU and Alamo Bowl

PROVO — Chase Roberts has a decision to make.

The BYU wide receiver led the Cougars with 843 yards and four touchdowns during a 10-2 regular season that ended a hair shy — or perhaps even, a pooch kick from Kansas quarterback Jalon Daniels off an inadvertent helmet-shy — of the Big 12 championship game.

In most cases, it would be a great launching point for the NFL draft — and moreso for Roberts, the redshirt junior from American Fork who will graduate in December after four seasons in Provo and a two-year church mission in Calgary, Alberta. He even admitted on the Cougars' collective-backed podcast that he was planning on declaring for the draft after the season.

Now those plans aren't so sure. He's been going back-and-forth, and said he'll make a formal decision later this week and let fans know about it via social media.

But was there ever a chance Roberts wouldn't play in the Cougars' end-of-season Alamo Bowl against No. 23 Colorado (9-3, 7-2 Big 12)? Not at all, he declared.

"You only get college football once," he said. "It's such a special experience with your brothers. The amount of time I've put in and that we've put in, from the offseason to being around each other to gaining that trust and that love, there's no doubt in my mind or any of these players to finish with our brothers."

Not long after a bowl season, where opting out was more the norm than opting in, the national trend seems to have reversed itself. Part of that likely has to do with a 12-team College Football Playoff, where three times as many squads are still eligible to win a national championship.

There also may be a financial incentive, with most players signing lucrative name, image and likeness contracts that may structure themselves differently for playing rather than shutting down the season early.

For a lot of players, though, the thought of closing out the season early never crossed their mind. That was the case for Jakob Robinson, the BYU senior with a likely NFL future who said he'll sign with an agent once the year is over.

Once Robinson, the former Utah State transfer who prepped at Orem High, saw a video of Colorado coach Deion Sanders emphatically declaring that none of the Buffs — including star quarterback Shedeur Sanders and Heisman Trophy-winning two-way star Travis Hunter — would end the season early, there was no way he wasn't going to play, he said.

"I just want to finish it out with my brothers," Robinson said.

While there are exceptions to the rule, the trend is holding up this season: More players are opting in than opting out. Among the 17th-ranked Cougars and Colorado, the only players who have formally opted out of the Alamo Bowl are those who entered the transfer portal — a decision spurred not only by playing time, NIL leverage, and the forthcoming cut down to a 105-man roster, but also the various academic calendars around the country where players need to register for classes by the time the semester starts in January to be eligible for spring football.

"I think people just realize you might as well be finishing it out with your team," Robinson said. "We've been grinding with them for the last 4-5 years, and you owe it to them."

Even a few players who won't be eligible for the full game have opted to compete in San Antonio, which is being called the best non-Playoff bowl game in college football by Sports Illustrated, The Athletic, Athlon Sports, The Washington Post and Yahoo! Sports.

BYU coach Kalani Sitake confirmed Wednesday that wide receiver Darius Lassiter, the Cougars' No. 2 receiver with 679 yards and four touchdowns after sitting out the season opener to regain his final season of eligibility, will play against Colorado. But the senior wide out will have to sit out the first half after being ejected with an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for his role in a late-game fight during BYU's win over Houston in the regular-season finale.

"That's just part of the consequences; you can't get involved in that kind of stuff," Sitake said. "It's not a fight, it's a game. It's unfortunate, but he'll have 30 minutes to make up for the rest of it."

It's all made bowl practices a bit more of a juggling act — albeit, a good problem to have, if it is — as BYU coaches balance the opening of the transfer portal, high school recruiting, bowl prep and maximizing the 15 extra bowl practices for the development of the younger players on the roster.

Before BYU was announced to the Alamo Bowl, it was easier to practice younger players, Sitake said. Since then, they've "had to mix it all together" with veterans and young or even redshirting players, alike.

"We want them to develop, and we want to take advantage of those extra practices," the coach said. "But the game is the No. 1 priority for us."

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