Remember when the goal of playing college football was to go to the NFL? Not anymore.
College football has become its own enterprise, with players receiving multi-million-dollar contracts. The recent rule changes regarding player eligibility have also led some players who were on NFL teams to go back to college.
While this does not directly impact the Houston Texans. General Manager Nick Caserio took exception to NFL players returning to college and pointed out that this issue is not specific to football but is also impacting other sports such as basketball.
“Twofold. First of all, it's ridiculous. Secondly, it doesn't really impact our job,” Caserio said. “The whole concept, we could spend an hour having that discussion. It doesn't necessarily
materially impact kind of what we're doing specific to training camp and those types of things. If they are in college, if they go back to college, you just evaluate them as if you would through the college lens, through the college process. We didn't have any players that fell under that restraining order so it wasn't really going to affect us. Conceptually, it's affected basketball as well. There was a kid that went back to Alabama that was in the G-League. Look, if you’re a professional player then you're a professional player. To go from being a professional player to a college athlete or amateur athlete, the whole thing is kind of ridiculous.”
Nick Caserio reemphasizes their view on the roster and how the practice squad is an extension of it. They view it more as a 69/70 player roster than a 53-man roster. pic.twitter.com/X045i71PN1
— Houston Stressans (@TexansCommenter) September 1, 2026
The changing world of college football is still impacting the NFL in other ways. For example, some prominent college players are choosing to stay in college longer to benefit from their expensive contracts instead of trying to get to the NFL whenever they are eligible and their draft stock is high.
This did not directly impact the Houston Texans last year, but will have rippling effects that impact every NFL team as these decisions change the entire course of the NFL Draft.
This article originally appeared on Texans Wire: Houston Texans GM Nick Caserio calls NFL players going back to college "ridiculous"
