Nice review of players that decided to move on: Link
http://www.al.com/alabamafootball/i...ul_are_players_aft.html#incart_river_home_pop
http://www.al.com/alabamafootball/i...ul_are_players_aft.html#incart_river_home_pop
I think there is a lot of young man psychology going on. When a star athlete is being recruited, he is told he is the greatest thing since sliced bread.This doesn't really surprise me at all. If you're not good enough to crack a starting lineup with as many players as we rotate in and out, how can you possibly be NFL caliber material? We keep all those guys fresh and a lot of the time we have juniors and seniors with a LOT of playing time even if they have yet to actually START a game. If you're good, it eventually comes out.
I had a football player as a student (not at Bama) who had realized that the NFL was not in his future. He realized that football was a way to earn a college degree and he paid the appropriate amount of attention to his studies. He still gave everything he had on the football field, but he knew his last college game would be his last football game.However, I would hope that there's a moment of realization in college where they understand that becoming an NFL player probably isn't going to happen and they should use their education to prepare for another career.