It is quickly becoming a common occurrence for players to skip college football bowl games in order to avoid injury after they have declared for the upcoming NFL Draft.

It has become a controversial topic, with some saying it's smart for players to prioritize their individual future and others criticizing the top NFL prospects for not finishing their season with their college team.

UCF will play LSU, which has multiple players that have decided to sit out, in the PlayStation Fiesta Bowl on New Year's Day. In a strong rebuke of players who decide to skip bowl games, Knights defensive coordinator Randy Shannon said that he thinks the practice of sitting out could trickle into the NFL.

"My opinion, it probably will fester more and more in college," Shannon told ESPN. "And then now the NFL is going to have to make a decision. If you draft a young man that leaves early and now you're not a playoff team, that young man [is] going to say, 'I'm not going to play.' Same situation. Right, wrong or indifferent.

"If a team is 6-9, no chance of them making the playoffs, are they going to play or are they going to tank it? Especially if you're on the last year of your contract, option year."

Shannon's mindset stems from coming up in a different era of football. He won a national championship at Miami, where he played under Jimmy Johnson from 1985-88. Shannon then played a little over one season in the NFL with the Dallas Cowboys before transitioning into a coaching career.

But just like many things in life, football has evolved since Shannon started playing and coaching. The same risk of an injury negatively affecting draft stock existed back then, but the decision to actually do it did not become popular.

With more research now available, and NFL salaries growing, players have started to weigh the risk and reward of sitting out. However, the likelihood of players deciding to skip NFL games because they missed a bowl game in college, as Shannon argues, doesn't seem likely.

Why? Most of the athletes we're talking about will be making seven-figure salaries. If that was happening at the college level, sitting out a bowl game would likely never even be a thought that comes up.

As for how bowl absences will affect the Fiesta Bowl, the two key losses for LSU are cornerback Greedy Williams and defensive tackle Ed Alexander. Both players announced that they would not play earlier this month in order to begin their NFL Draft preparations. Those departures, combined with injuries, will force the Tigers to make adjustments against a UCF team, which has won 25 games in a row dating back to last season.

“Especially with the amount of plays that Central Florida is going to run against us and the speed in which they run,” Orgeron said. “We have to rotate our defensive line. We have some young guys that have not burned their redshirt year up. They're able to still play and get redshirted.

“We're going to have to rotate our defensive line and have several guys playing who probably haven't played that much. They'll have to do it.”