“Really Concerned About Those Kids”: Charles Barkley Advocates for Shortened College Football Season Amid Injury Worries

College football fans will finally be getting their wish when the 12-team College Football Playoff debuts tonight. Indiana and Notre Dame will kick off the first round, while Saturday will feature a tripleheader when SMU takes on Penn State, Clemson travels to Texas, and Tennessee visits Ohio State.

The expansion of the playoffs has created more excitement around the sport, but not everybody thinks that it’s a good idea. Charles Barkley recently appeared on The Dan Patrick Show to discuss a wide range of topics, including why he thinks that the extra games created by having a four-round playoff show that nobody cares about the health of college athletes.

Barkley admitted to being excited about the games themselves, but he also had this to say:

“I think it’s very dangerous. You can’t ask 18-year-old, 19-year-old kids to play 12, 13 regular season games, then play four more games in the playoffs, because 99 percent of those kids are gonna have CTE or are going to hurt their bodies, and they’re never going to the NFL. They’ve got to shorten the season.”

Barkley pointed out that players on championship-winning teams used to have to only play two extra games, but having to play four under the new system could jeopardize their health. “I’m really concerned about those kids’ bodies and brains.”

Patrick said that nobody cares because college athletes are paid now and will have revenue sharing in the future, to which Barkley agreed. “They don’t! Nobody cares. [The higher-ups in college football] are making so much money.”

There is renewed interest in College Football but at a price

In addition to believing that the CFP produces too much of a physical burden on college athletes, Barkley took it a step further by saying that college football should do away with non-CFP-affiliated bowl games because they’re meaningless in the grand scheme of things now.

“Let’s kill these other bowls. Come on, man. If you’re gonna have the playoffs, you don’t need other bowls.”

Throughout the sports world, there are more games than necessary being played, and the only reason why is money. Baseball doesn’t need 162 games. The NBA doesn’t need 82. Even the NFL, which is the most dangerous of them all, has expanded to 17 games and is likely to hit 18 soon.

Studies have shown the devastating effects of CTE, and every season it seems that more and more athletes go down with torn ACLs, pulled hamstrings, and myriad other ailments. The only reason to keep adding more games is to fatten up the bottom line.

Forcing college kids to play extra games can be especially harmful, but as long as everyone is getting paid, that’s all that will matter. As long as football is so popular and fans want to see it, we’ll keep getting more and more games at the expense of athletes’ health. As Dan Patrick put it, “ESPN needs programming, that’s all this is.”