I fault no individual players at all, but the system that permits this contradiction to not only be acceptable, but applauded.
The insanity of it, the team that finishes 5th in the poll … 5th in the freaking country, MFers … and gets the Rose Bowl (or whatever) … it’s encouraged and applauded that all of its players worth even half a dam should sit out. In fact they are called morons if they do play.
Whereas the #4 team, which might be in that slot over #5 by the barest of margins…a drunken Ron Cook vote, cast during a conjugal visit to Sandusky, for example…gets to be the sacrificial lamb opponent, usually to uber-mighty Alabama or Georgia, in the 1st round of the playoff. Any of #4’s players that would dare to opt out (for exactly the same reason #5 players would opt out), would be lambasted and presumably frowned upon by NFL scouts.
Meanwhile, as mentioned, all of these games are counted in official season stats.
Insanity.