Business decisions

 Bowl season officially begins in two days, when Northern Illinois plays Coastal Carolina in something called the Cure Bowl, which is not short for "Curing the glut of meaningless bowl games" no matter what you think.

Speaking of meaningless bowl games ...

Well. I've got some news that's not really news, and hasn't been for a long time:

They're pretty much all meaningless.

They're exhibition games, is what they are, ATMs for the sponsors and mostly money losers for the participants. Except for the Cotton and Orange bowls, which host this year's College Football Playoff semifinal games, they're just a chance for players to score some swag the NCAA has somehow deemed legal -- but don't try to sell it, gentlemen.

And so of course players with an eye on the NFL Draft are once again opting out.

Star running back Kyren Williams and All-American safety Kyle Hamilton from Notre Dame have already said they'll skip the Irish's date in the Fiesta Bowl, the better to protect their draft status. So has Oregon defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux, a potential No. 1 pick who's decided the Valero Alamo Bowl just isn't worth risking that.

This has evoked the usual outcry from the usual suspects, mostly coaches and specifically Mississippi State coach Mike Leach, who said skipping bowl games was "selfish," "ridiculous" and "the most bizarre thing in the world to me."

As usual when coaches say this stuff, Leach is the last person in the world who should be criticizing players for acting in their own interests. Coaches act in their own interests all the time, after all. Brian Kelly and Lincoln Riley are the most recent examples, Leach himself has done a little extracurricular flirting -- interviewing for the Washington job while he was still at Texas Tech, then leveraging it into a five-year extension from Tech worth $12.7 million.

Of course, that wasn't selfish. That was just bidness, like Kelly telling his Notre Dame players "Later, dudes," and then peeling out for LSU, where he'll now make $10 million a year. 

Needless to say, he didn't stick around for the Fiesta Bowl, either.

And Williams and Hamilton, among others?

Well, they came to Notre Dame for an education, and it appears they got one. If coaches fancy themselves as educators, Williams and Hamilton learned Brian Kelly's lessons well.

Games are just games, in other words. But bidness is bidness.