What bothered him was that he felt the student body didn't show up for the football team and that this lack of energy drained the Stanford Cardinal of its home-field advantages. It made Hinton feel like he wasn't getting "a real college football experience," especially coming from Georgia, where college football doesn't take a back seat to anything. And perhaps most importantly, he couldn't see a path to going pro. So last December, Hinton made the decision to leave.