Holiday reminiscing.

Christmas time 2015 in Orlando. There with family enjoying my gift. On the street where we are staying, there is only one place for refueling (convenience store).

After the day of festivities, I go to this station to fill the tank. Whom do I see in the store? No, not the new Georgia football coach Kirby Smart on a recruiting trip. No, not the new Miami Hurricanes head coach Mark Richt on a recruiting trip.

It’s football players from Baylor University. Yes, the Bears are staying in a place across the street from this store, and some of them are picking things up all decked out in their green gear. They had just arrived for their bowl game to take place a few days later against North Carolina. I took the opportunity to ask a couple of them if they knew a player I covered in his high school career who had gone on to play and start at Baylor.

Little did they know, however, they were about to lose their head coach. Nope, didn’t give them a heads up because … well, seeing into the future isn’t my thing.

Ah yes, a mix of the Christmas season and the college bowl season. What a great trip for Colquitt County High’s Ty Lee getting to go to the islands of Hawaii with his Middle Tennessee State Blue Raider teammates. Maybe not a great trip home as MTSU lost to Hawaii 52-35, but Lee can carry some personal momentum with his performance, 10 receptions for 100 yards and two touchdowns. One of his teammates, Richie James, had a school bowl game record 162 receiving yards on eight catches.

One more sidenote for Lee is that the Blue Raiders are on schedule to play the Georgia Bulldogs in the 2018 season.

Seeing how productive Lee was, he apparently had no reason to skip the Hawaii Bowl. Some prominent running backs from prominent colleges, however, are looking ahead to the National Football League Draft as early-entry candidates and are bypassing one last college game. Neither Stanford nor LSU are in the College Football Playoff, so neither Christian McCaffrey nor Leonard Fournette see any reason to risk injury.

We just cannot seem to make up our minds about college players and college sports. Nick Chubb, Sony Michel, they are going to return to the University of Georgia, and we Bulldogs can do nothing but rejoice … until one or both gets injured again, and all we will hear is how they ruined their prospects at a big professional career and the guaranteed contract that goes with it. Yes, you play your senior year and you risk either getting hurt or having your stock plummet (see USC’s Matt Leinart).

It wasn’t long ago when we heard suggestions that a big-time star like Jadeveon Clowney sit out his whole junior season at South Carolina. No, can’t do that, can’t pass up on the experience of actually playing big-time SEC football.

If you followed that story, you know Clowney did play for the Gamecocks, did become the No. 1 overall pick of the Houston Texans and got hurt anyway. He is, however, doing better playing in 27 out of 31 possible games so far over the last two years.

But sitting out a bowl game … if I may digress to the NBA, I remember the days of Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and even Michael Jordan, and I don’t recall players – even with it being an 82-game regular season – sitting out a game in the early to mid stages just to “rest.”

In professional football, playoff locked teams want to “rest” starters in the last week or two in order to be fresh for the playoffs. And we just had a big debate about the commissioner’s call for an 18-game schedule. How much would the “rest” players get increase when that happens.

What all of these examples have in common is that, no matter who plays or doesn’t play in terms of marquee names, the admission price for the spectator remains the same. Sometimes those tickets were bought before the big announcement was made. The good thing about going out to a movie is that you are assured the actors in the cast list will be in the film. Go to the live theatre, and there’s a little bit of a chance of seeing an understudy in the lead role.

When Citrus Bowl officials in Orlando invited LSU to play Louisville, I would think they had an impression Fournette would be suiting up and giving them something to market locally. If I’m in El Paso, Texas, I might be more inclined to take in the Sun Bowl, Stanford vs. North Carolina, if McCaffrey planned to be part of it.

Yes, things can happen that keep a big-name player out of a bowl. There’s plenty of time after the regular season for that thing we hear about time and again: the suspension. Two Liberty Bowls ago for Georgia, some players were caught where they weren’t supposed to be like the night before the game. One was the regular placekicker. So a youngster named John Kasey got the main kicking chores and actually won the game against Arkansas. (Kasey had a lengthy pro career, mainly with Carolina.)

You may show up to a baseball game expecting one pitching matchup and getting another due to that late scratch. Tuning in expecting to see Stephen Strasburg make his first ever start against the Braves and the first words you hear: “Strasburg is not going to pitch.”

My concluding opinion: Players, play every game you possibly can. Fans, be understanding of circumstances beyond anyone’s control.