Why College Football is Better Than the NFL
It’s that time of year again when you flip through channels on the television and those men of the gridiron are back. Many topics come up at the beginning of every football season. Who is the #1 ranked team in college football, who is going to win the Super Bowl, who is the Heisman trophy winner going to be, who should I pick first in my fantasy draft? Well those are all good questions, but I want to talk about another topic that comes up ever year. Which is better: College football or the NFL? Now for me it’s a no-brainer, college football is far and away the better of the two. Why you ask. Well, that’s exactly what I’m going to do, tell you why college football is better.
Saturday vs. Sunday
I may be in the minority on this one but I prefer watching football on Saturdays than Sundays, the main reason being that Saturdays are so much open for me. On Saturdays there is no work (or school when I was in school) so I can sleep in, wake up at about 11:00 and chill around the house watching football literally until bedtime. As for Sundays, well being the church goer that I am I have to get up early on Sundays and go to church. I will usually get home a little bit into the first lump of games, but there are usually other afternoon activities at church I also go to, and no, football isn’t more important than church. So for me at least, football is more convenient on Saturdays.
Friendships and rivalries
Let’s say you’re in high school and you and your friend try out for the football team. You both become stars and form a rivalry with the star from your rival team. Eventually you graduate high school and you go to college. In a lot of cases you and your friend could up at the same college playing together, or you could end up on rival college teams. You could end up on the same team as your rival in high school, or you could renew the rivalry on separate teams in college. This happens a lot for players who go from high school to college. What about college to the NFL? I could be drafted by Miami, my friend could be drafted by Oakland, and our rival from high school could be drafted by Chicago. When would we see each other? Probably Never. Which scenario makes for better stories?
Rivalries
It amazes me that the NFL is so popular because of the big draws for any sport is rivalries, and honestly NFL is really lacking. What rivalries are left in the NFL? Packers-Bears isn’t that big of a deal anymore, neither is Packers-Vikings. Nobody cares about the Chiefs-Broncos or Raiders-Chiefs anymore. I guess maybe Cowboys-Redskins is still important. Still even if you included all those rivalries, that’s still not as many as just the SEC teams alone. They have Florida-Tennessee, Florida-Georgia, Florida-FSU, Florida-Auburn, Tennessee-Alabama, Tennessee-, Alabama-LSU, Auburn-Alabama, -Georgia Tech, South Carolina-Clemson, Arkansas-Alabama,OleMiss-MississippiState, and Arkansas-Ole Miss. That’s just the SEC too; throw in Ohio State-Michigan, Texas-Oklahoma, USC-Notre Dame, Notre Dame-Michigan, FSU-Miami, and Navy-Army. It’s not even close; College Football completely blows the NFL out of the water in the rivalries category.
School Pride
In college football most of the players are playing for school pride. They’re playing for their school, their fans, in some cases even their families. In the NFL they play for money. A NFL player has one good season and they don’t even want to wait until the contract they signed is up, they want to restructure it immediately! I know you’re thinking well some college football players get paid. It’s true, some college football players do want money, but for the most part those players are going to leave school early, the schools will say good riddance and move on without them. You don’t want to play for our school, no problem; we’ll replace you with somebody else.
Mascots
If you ask some random person on the street to name a College Football mascots how many would they be able to name? There’s UGA the Bulldog, Bevo the Longhorn, Brutus Buckeye, Tiger the Eagle, Aubie the Tiger, Big Al, Bucky Badger, Cocky, the Notre Dame Leprechaun. Now who can name us some NFL mascots? Can you hear the crickets too?
Tradition
Tradition is what college football is all about. The rivalries, the history of the programs, the ceremonies. It doesn’t get much better than Texas A&M’s 12th man or the Army/Navy procession. There’s the Florida State Chief Osceola, The Tiger Walk,Ohio State dotting the I, The Grove at Ole Miss. What kind of traditions does the NFL have? Season ending injuries in meaningless preseason games and throwing ice balls and batteries onto the field?
Importance
The first game of the season for the Miami Hurricanes and Florida State Seminoles are against each other. Whoever loses, it’s over. Just one game into the season and either FSU or Miami’s chances of a National Championship will pretty much be over because you’re probably not going to the National Championship with one loss, you’re definitely not going with two losses. This makes every game vital. It makes every game exciting. The big Florida-Tennessee showdown is huge, but if Vanderbilt is leading Tennessee at halftime that’s just as huge, because if Tennessee loses to Vandy? Forget about it. In the NFL you can lose 4 or 5 in a row and still make the playoffs. Sometimes a team has clinched a playoff spot and rests their star players the last week, making it the dullest week of the season. In college the last week of the season is the MOST exciting. All the teams who are undefeated have just one more hurdle to jump, and for most of them it’s against their arch rival, nobody sits the last week of the season in college football.
Postseason
Yes I know I know. You’re thinking, how he is going to explain this one. The Super Bowl is way better than the BCS. It’s true the Super Bowl gets huge ratings but let me ask you something. I’m sure you all went to Super Bowl parties, how many people at that party can actually tell you anything about the game? How many of those people can tell you the final score? How many people can tell you who the MVP was? Not many, because most of them were up getting food during the game because they only watch the commercials. That’s all anyone talks about the day after the Super Bowl. “Did you see that Doritos commercial??” People who watched the National Championship game actually watched the game, what a concept. They can tell you what happened; they can tell you that Vince Young won the MVP. Also what about the participants in the games? The National Championship game was between #1 USC and #2 Ohio State. The Super Bowl was between the #1 Seahawks and, at best, the #10 Steelers. Huh? I know all pro sports have playoffs like this, but that’s why college football is better than all of them. Why should the 10th place team in the NFL get a shot at the championship? Why should the 16th place team in the NBA get a shot at the championship? Wouldn’t you rather just see #1 vs. #2? Ok, so sometimes the BCS doesn’t get it right, but #2 vs. #3 is still better than #1 vs. #10.
Yes college football has too many bowl games but the college football postseason also delivers some great matchups. For example, the Florida Gators, a major football program, fielded their first team in 1906. Another annual powerhouse is the Michigan Wolverines, who first took the field in 1879. These two legendary programs didn’t face off against each other until 2002. Can you imagine how big a game is when the two teams have been great for nearly 100 years and never faced each other? There is a match up like this nearly every year in the bowl games. What do we get in the NFL? We get to see the Bengals vs. Steelers AGAIN, for the third time in that one season.
