[winflop]

No, it was not clearly a meaningless game (such a dramatic characterization!).  The Rice game was played with two more weekends left in the season before bowl selections were announced.  Any number of situations could have happened to where Stanford could have been selected to a better bowl.  Until bowl selection, no one knew what was going to happen to the bowl matchups.  But I think CMac would have left for anything short of a NY6 bowl.

If your last statement is true, then those last 2-3 games were all meaningless to CMAC. THere was no way we were getting into a NY6 bowl with all of the Pac12 teams ahead of us in the pecking order. And if all he cared about was playing in a NY6 bowl game, then he should have quit the team and focused on the draft much earlier. Playing in those games was a foolish risk to his long term earning potential.

Either he was was stupid to play those meaningless games or he's a bad teammate for not playing one last meaningless game. I don't see a distinction.

Based on that statement, every game after the loss to Colorado was meaningless.

[winflop]

No, it was not clearly a meaningless game (such a dramatic characterization!).  The Rice game was played with two more weekends left in the season before bowl selections were announced.  Any number of situations could have happened to where Stanford could have been selected to a better bowl.  Until bowl selection, no one knew what was going to happen to the bowl matchups.  But I think CMac would have left for anything short of a NY6 bowl.

If your last statement is true, then those last 2-3 games were all meaningless to CMAC. THere was no way we were getting into a NY6 bowl with all of the Pac12 teams ahead of us in the pecking order. And if all he cared about was playing in a NY6 bowl game, then he should have quit the team and focused on the draft much earlier. Playing in those games was a foolish risk to his long term earning potential.

Either he was was stupid to play those meaningless games or he's a bad teammate for not playing one last meaningless game. I don't see a distinction.

Based on that statement, every game after the loss to Colorado was meaningless.