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At this point, dignity.

Look, I'm happy for the time the guy has spent here, but my God has a player ever checked out as much as he has in the past year? Takes off spring, summer, fall practice, comes back 3 games into the season and looks terrible, put on a boatload of bad weight. Finally starts to look like his old self midway through our schedule, then doesn't play in the last 2 games this year because of a finger/hand injury?...and now, even though he may be plenty healthy enough to play in the bowl game, might skip that too.

If I'm an NFL franchise I'm not spending a 1st round pick on him, way too much of a risk.

To be fair, he did have surgery on his finger.

I'd love to see him play one more time. But I can't blame him at all if he doesn't. He would have so much to lose and very little to gain.

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Edit - and if I'm Coach O I'm saying you could certainly stand to gain a lot to come back and give 100% effort for a full year to move your way back up to being a Top 10/15 type pick in the draft

Great pass rushers are like gold to NFL teams. There is a reason those guys get snatched up quickly in the draft. They're few and far between. Yes, Key definitively checked out to a large degree. But when he was "on" he was every bit the terror he was since he first stepped on the field at LSU. All one has to do is put on the Alabama tape to see how he affected that game.

He may not be a "perfect" prospect. But like QB's, NFL teams are willing to overlook issues if the potential for greatness is there. Key has it and coming back to LSU isn't necessary. In fact, it could ONLY hurt him more than it could help him.

Clowney came into his junior season out of shape with big questions surrounding his motivation. He had a poor junior season relative to his monster soph. season (sound familiar?) Yet, despite all those "issues" he STILL went #1 overall. Key may not go #1 overall, but he's not dropping out of the first round UNLESS he gets seriously injured...which means playing in the bowl game isn't worth it.