Is there any other football?

I tried to watch the whole Ohio State-Texas game this weekend, I really did. Unfortunately, I have a serious problem when it comes to college football: the whole time I’m watching it, I can’t help but thinking how much more fun it this would be if I were watching a real football game. By this I am, of course, referring to the NFL (Ha! And to think some of you thought for a second that I was going to write about how entertaining soccer is. Well…I wasn’t. If I did, it would be a pretty short column. But seriously, folks….). Where was I? Oh yeah, the NFL. Anyway, by the third quarter I switched the game off and started playing Madden. This is because even a video game involving an imaginary Bears dynasty is far more engaging then watching one of the six or seven college football games of the whole year with legitimate national title implications.

As a person who views the first week of the college football as a mere appetizer that is best skipped to fully enjoy the coming football feast, it’s somewhat distressing to me that some people actually find the college game more entertaining. So, in order to put this foolhardy notion to rest once and for all, here are the reasons that the NFL is superior:

1) The players are bigger, faster, and smarter.

This should be pretty much a no-brainer, since the NFL is basically a collection of 32 alumni all-star teams. Because of this, NFL play is faster, cleaner, and smarter. How many times have you seen an NFL player field a kick return five yards deep in the end zone, run out an stop on the goal line, then retreat back into the end zone and narrowly avoid a safety? I’ll tell you this much – you wouldn’t see the same guy do it more than once. This isn’t a one-time occurrence in major college football, either: last year I swear I saw someone on a ranked D-I team run out of the end zone on a kick return – only to take a knee on the two yard line.

2) The coaches are better.

Yes, I know that there are a lot of legendary coaches in college football, and there have been some downright horrible coaches in the NFL, but consider that two of the most legendary coaches of the last fifteen years, Pete Carroll and Steve Spurrier, were mediocre coaches in the NFL (and I’m being incredibly gracious to Mr. Spurrier right now). Meanwhile, Charlie Wies, who wasn’t even a head coach in the NFL, appears to have turned Notre Dame around in less than a year. Thanks to better players and coaching, you don’t see nearly as many games in the NFL decided by safeties, blocked kicks, fumbles, etc, at least not once you consider how many more close games there are in the NFL. By the way, the officials are better, the cheerleaders are better, and the Jumbotrons in most stadiums are better, too.

3) In order to repeat, you have to win the Championship for two years in a row.

Honestly, if I read one more person who mentions USC’s “three-peat” attempt, I’m going to snap my laptop in half.

****BREAKING NEWS********

LSU won the National Championship game two years ago. I swear, seriously, I can remember it. In the words of Mugatu, “Am I the only one who notices this? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!” As near as I can figure, USC ran the table in a good (or at least highly visible) conference and won the 3rd place game, which is apparently good enough to be considered Champions. Unless you’re Auburn.

Here’s the thing: by definition, you can’t have two Champions from the same year. The only difference between the 2004 Auburn and 2003 USC teams is that USC was picked first in a poll. Apparently, if you want to win in college football, generating lots of hype is every bit as important as actually winning football games. This brings me to my next point:

4) The NFL doesn’t have too many teams (well, at least not by a huge margin).

Don’t get me wrong. There’s something appealing about the fact that there’s a major sport with 117 teams. Except that nobody could name off all of them without somehow cheating. And if you’re one of the teams that people have a hard time naming off, what exactly do you think your chances are of generating enough hype to make it into college football’s two-team playoff even WITH an undefeated season? At least college basketball has devised a playoff system under which most decent teams will have a chance to win it all. Maybe I’m a softie, but I feel like 2 playoff teams out of 117 places a little bit too much emphasis on the regular season. (Yes, I have heard the “every game is a playoff game” argument for college football. This holds up pretty well until you realize that a playoff game should involve high stakes for both teams involved, and that any team that wins every playoff game it is in should be crowned champions in any sport).

5) The NFL has a salary cap.

This isn’t so much in reference to the fact that I find NFL players pretending to be working professionals funnier or more endearing than NCAA players pretending to be college students, nor am I implying that more than fifteen or twenty D-I schools actually pay their players. However, take a look at some of tonight’s scores (we’ll just look at the top 25 and schools from big conferences since everyone else’s season is already over):

Fresno State 42, Weber State 10 (at HALFTIME)
Texas 25, OSU 22
Notre Dame 17, Michigan 10
Virginia Tech 45, Duke 0
Florida State 62, The Citadel 10
Purdue 49, Akron 24
California 56, Washington 17
Oklahoma 31, Tulsa 15 (3 Field Goals, a TD, and a missed conversion, since I know you were wondering)
Boston College 44, Army 7
Texas Tech 56, Florida International 3
Wisconsin 65, Temple 0
Auburn 28, Mississippi State 0
Michigan State 42, Hawaii 14

In the first 8 weeks of the NFL season last year there were 14 games decided by 21 or more points (out of 116 games). (I just got really happy when I realized there are going to be 115 more NFL games in the next 8 weeks.)

I feel like I’ve made my point.

By the way, I included those two close games to illustrate another point. Two weeks into the season, and Michigan and OSU are D-U-N Done in terms of winning a title this year. Why the hell would I follow a sport where my team can be mathematically eliminated one-sixth of the way through the season?

6) There are only one or two true “run first” QBs in the NFL.

At first, you would think this was a negative, as you associate the scrambling Quarterback with exciting runs (a la Mike Vick), RB-like tackle breaking (think early Culpepper), and the ability to buy an impossible amount of time in the pocket (McNabb). The problem is, non-NFL ready QBs who think of themselves as scramblers are usually just plain ugly to watch. Even Vince Young (which sounds like the name of the new frontman for Whitesnake), who is supposed to be one of the best players in college football, was pretty tough to watch until Ohio State shut down the running game and he went to his arm (which is what he should have been doing all along). Troy Smith and dozens of other D-I QBs fit this mold, and for every breathtaking play there are about five horrific ones (like Young’s interception in the second quarter). The reason college teams love guys like this is that while savvy QBs who play within themselves and know when and when not to run are ideal during the grind of an NFL-style playoff, where you have to beat two or three great teams in a row and can’t afford to have your Quarterback kill the team. However, these athletic, scrambler Quarterbacks accomplish goal #2, which is to generate a ton of hype, since they can be billed as a ‘weapon unlike anything the game has ever seen.’ Most people will forget that Randall Cunningham was playing that style better than anyone currently in the NFL or NCAA back in the eighties.
Plus, the few guys who are able to play this style effectively eventually make it to the NFL, and by then they’re usually a little more polished.

7) The NFL hasn’t made any efforts to destroy the last remaining legacy of Native American culture in their original homeland.

I feel like this one is pretty self-explanatory.

8) Fantasy sports work twice as well for the NFL as for anything else, including college football.

Let’s face it: fantasy football rocks. Thanks to fantasy football, most NFL fans are very knowledgeable about every team in the league, whereas as recently as the late 90s, people really only knew about the teams that were billed as contenders, their favorite team, and the teams in their favorite team’s division. It’s also a good way to keep in touch with eleven or twelve of your best friends indefinitely, especially if you don’t mind alienating everyone else in your life for half of the year. The thing is, only in football does every team play more or less once a week, which makes the head-to-head competition – the very core of its addictiveness to guys, who are competitive by nature for some reason – not only feasible, but also natural. And the NFL has the perfect number of players for a ten to twelve person league. To do a decent college fantasy league, you would probably need about thirty-five teams, and in order to be remotely competitive everyone would have to do way more research than you and your thirty-four closest friends are willing to put into a group hobby. Plus, thirty-five teams are too many for a fantasy league built around a twelve-week season…especially if you have a two-team playoff. Hey, maybe you could have random strangers vote on who should be in the championship, then it would be just like college football!

The sad thing is that more than half of these problems would be solved immediately if the NCAA adopted something as basic as an eight-team playoff (heck, even switching to a four-team playoff would get me interested in the sport), but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen soon, despite the fact that almost everyone thinks it would be a good idea. Would the NFL abandon a proposal that its entire fan base was clamoring for? That question I leave to you.