End of Discussion: Why College Football Is Better Than the NFL

Let the hate commence!

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Image via Complex Original
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Introduction

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Regular Season

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Regular Season

The present college football postseason is, on the whole, a warmed over piece of sh*t that, depending on the year, tastes alright if all the ingredients fall perfectly into place (but more on that later). It does however make the college football regular season the most pressure-packed in sports. The Bears and the Packers, the Cowboys and the Redskins, the Raiders and the Broncos, the Steelers and the Ravens—they're all arguably bigger rivals than Alabama and LSU. But they rarely play regular season games against each other as important as this weekend's SEC matchup (hence college's multiple "Games of the Century" each decade).

In the college regular season, It's pretty simple, really: Whatever you do, don't f*cking lose. Innumerable would-be classic college football seasons have been lost to fluke defeats at the hands of inferior opponents. Just ask Alabama, Boise State, and Stanford, all one-loss teams that could have easily played in the national championship game last year. One-loss teams can and do occasionally make the championship game, but if you are going to lose, make sure you lose early in the season so you can scratch back in the standings. Only once in the 13-year history of the BCS has a two-loss team played for title (LSU in 2007 who defeated Ohio State to win the chip).

Contrast that to the NFL. In 2008, the Arizona Cardinals went to the Super Bowl with a 9-7 record. Imagine a team just two games over .500 going to the BCS title game...on second thought, don't (we're positive we don't want to see Iowa try to play the LSU-Alabama winner in January). Hell, last year, the freaking Seattle Seahawks made it into the playoffs with a 7-9 record. No, you're not dyslexic, that's 7-9 as in a LOSING record. In college football, only winning teams play in the BCS games, even if the method of choosing those teams is a little suspect.

Advantage: College

College: 1 | NFL: 0

Stadiums

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Stadiums

Shawn Carter said it best, "Men lie, women lie....numbers don't." The 15 biggest stadiums in the country are college fields (including the Cotten Bowl). There's power in numbers, but there's also beauty in the old fashioned grandeur and simplicity of a bowl. NFL games are played on "Fields" (they've even got a covered "Field" in Detroit). College games are played in coliseums. L.A. Memorial. The Big House. The Rose Bowl. Even Cal's Memorial Stadium perched on a fault line. No upper deck, no mezzanine, no box seats, no upper deck box seats, and no mezzanine box seats. And definitely no luxury boxes. Just rows and rows of bleachers, damn near literally as far as the eye can see. (OK, so some of the aforementioned have luxury suites now. Great. If you watch a game from a luxury suite at the Big House, sorry, but you're a loser.) Add the energy of teen spirit, college girls and drunken alums, and it's clear that NFL stadiums have nothing on a college ballfield.

Advantage: College

College: 2 | NFL: 0

Rules

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Rules

There are four major rules differences between college and professional football: the placement of the hash marks, the number of feet required to be inbounds for a completion, clock stoppages, and overtime. The hash marks (the set of small lines running perpendicular to the sidelines that determine where plays start) on an NFL field are 18 feet and 6 inches apart, the same width as the goal posts, and are 70 feet, 9 inches from the sideline. The college has marks are 40 feet apart and 60 feet in from the sidelines. Because the hash marks in the NFL are so close, they play much less of a factor in determining what side to run a play, leaving much more responsibility to the defensive play callers both on and off the field. We like the less predictable version, so the point goes to the NFL.

The NFL requires two feet inbounds for a completion, college just one. The more stringent NFL rule prompts more trapeze-worthy sideline tight-rope walking, and is a pretty clear win for the pro game.

On both levels the clock stops for timeouts, penalties, incomplete passes, out of bounds plays, and post-snap spiked balls; in college, the clock also stops—temporarily—for first downs so the chain gang can reset the first down markers. The NFL clock continues to run, regardless of first downs. The NFL forces offenses to abandon the middle of the field in the final minutes if they have no timeouts, and it's arguably a more cerebral game. But the mini-timeouts the college 1st down rule provides allows for faster, more spectacular comebacks. A point there for college.

The overtime formats on both levels are imperfect, to say the least. The pro game (in the regular season) gives a huge advantage to the team that wins the coin toss. In college overtimes, teams trade possessions beginning on the opponents' 25-yard-line, a format that favors teams with strong red zone offenses and eliminates most elements of special teams altogether. The new NFL overtime format adopted for last year's playoffs, in which the team that loses the coin toss gets a possession if it stops the opponent from scoring a touchdown, is actually the least imperfect option overall.

Advantage: NFL

College: 2 | NFL: 1

Style of Play

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Style of Play

Whether it's the triple option by Paul Johnson and the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets or the fast paced Oregon spread, offensive philosophies in college football are ever-changing. A few years ago Nevada head coach Paul Ault didn't want his team to be one dimensional and didn't like the pro offense, so he invented the Pistol, putting the quarterback closer to the center and lining the running back behind him, creating more deception as the ball is hidden from the offense for a second. Clemson runs an all-no huddle, all the time offense that often features option and pass reads on the same play.

Ironically, it's the NFL's superior athletes that make its style of play less exciting than college ball's. The NFL simply has too many fast athletes to be able to run an offense like Oregon that relies heavily on perimeter plays. The NFL always needs the threat of the run to keep pass rush attacks honest, while college teams like Houston can regularly sit back and throw the ball for 600 yards.

Advantage: College

College: 3 | NFL: 1

Pageantry And Tradition

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Pageantry and Tradition

The NFL has the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. They've got pink wristbands and pink do rags and pink piping on the sideline hats (all for breast cancer awareness, a noble endeavor, no doubt). It's even got the occasional Stealth Bomber buzzing the crowd for big games. What it doesn't have, however, is massive, organized mobs of people who play songs that make men cry, do shit that pisses off Ann Landers, and march around the field like a bunch of frickin' ants. At halftime of NFL games, we get to watch Terry Bradshaw and Boomer Esiason (that's not a good thing). In college, we get high-stepping tributes to Michael Jackson. Roger Goodell's brain would melt if he saw this much dancing on a football field.

The NFL isn't short on tradition. Listening to "The Autumn Wind Is a Raider" triggers Proustian reveries involving shag-carpeted basements and drunken grandfathers ranting about Heidi (and we're not even that old). But it's not Howard's Rock. Or "Play Like a Champion Today". Or even Missouri alumni and current students exchanging M-I-Z and Z-O-U chants across Faurot Field after every touchdown.

Advantage: College

College: 4 | NFL: 1

Playoffs

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Playoffs

This is the 600 pound offensive lineman in the room when it comes to college football (a 600 pound defensive lineman who really, really sucks). College football's Bowl Championship Series (BCS), the four major bowls (Rose, Orange, Sugar, Fiesta) plus the BCS National Championship Game, is structurally flawed, in that it guarantees a spot for the conference champion in six conferences (the Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 12, ACC, Big East, and SEC), no matter how weak the conference and/or conference champion might be in a given year (we see you Big East). The quality of the bowl system as a whole is even worse, with more than half of FBS (Division I) teams receiving bowl bids last year, and the only requirement for bowl eligibility being that a team finish at least 6-6.

For pigskin junkies, having a gajillion bowls in December is not the worst fate by any means (even the Ray's Pizza Hula Hoop Bowl can redeem a wack holiday party or evening at the in-laws), but it's silly to pretend that those bowls are anywhere near as compelling as the NFL Playoffs. The Wild Card and Divisional rounds of the NFL Playoffs, with four games spread over two glorious weekends, are among the most awesome days in all of sports, even with the occasional participation of the Seattle Seahawks. Not to mention that league title game they call the Super Bowl.

Advantage: NFL

College: 4 | NFL: 2

Money

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Money

Playing a sport for money might be the greatest thing, well, ever. The average NFL career may last fewer than four years, but with a minimum salary of $295,000, it's not a bad gig, if you can get it. Sure, the long-term contracts aren't actually guaranteed, and fans and commentators may give players a hard time when they do get up-front dough and fail to live up to expectations, but those players can laugh all the way to the bank (and maybe sip on something on their way downtown).

Along with its postseason, college football's amateurism policy is a major, major black eye for the sport. College players who are on scholarship get their tuition, books, and housing paid for them with very little spending money except on holiday weekends if a team is on campus and the usual dining halls aren't open. Meanwhile schools, bowls, television networks, and 10 dozen other non-football playing entities make money hand over fist off of these young men's efforts. When players do accept "benefits" they can become pariahs in their college communities (see Pryor, Terrelle) or are excoriated in the mainstream press (which, not incidentally, has a major stake in keeping their labor pool working for cheap).

Why should any of this bother you? When NBA players are fighting for 50% of sport-related income, it just seems fair to ask why college players shouldn't be given some scratch for all the money they make for other people. Because, while a small fraction of college players go on to huge paydays in the NFL, the vast majority are in the 99% like the rest of us. And some of them carry permanent scars from their amateur playing days.

Advantage: NFL

College: 4 | NFL: 3

Uniforms

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Uniforms

God bless the NFL. It's by far the best run sports organization in the country. But of course, nothing in life is perfect. Their is a glaring red crater-esque zit on the nose of the National Football League, aka those ugly ass white socks that the players are required to wear. The NFL would be a great place if they just got rid of the white socks. NFL bandits such as the late great Sean Taylor, Aaron Ross, Fred Smoot, and Dez Bryant all put smiles on our faces when they are playing on national TV and say "fuck the NFL fashion police" and ditch the white socks for their own special recipes of swagoo. On the college side, look at the Oregon Ducks and Oklahoma State Cowboys. Joan Rivers wouldn't have one bad thing to say bout these unis and Louis Vuitton would die for a collab. Not to mention, the spat game of the college players crushes the NFL guys. From head to toe, the college boys take the NFL players to school in terms of uniform fashion.

Advantage: College

College: 5 | NFL: 3

Girls at Games

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Girls at Games

Female NFL fans are an exotic, and very, very sexy breed. (Yes, even the three-toothed Raiderettes who steal your wallet at the urinal trough. Especially the three-toothed Raiderettes who steal your wallet at the urinal trough.) There's something...marriageable about a woman at a sports bar at 7:00 on a Sunday, ordering her 10th beer and feverishly checking her fantasy team on her cell phone.

But college is...college, a time to let loose and make a few not-so-reasoned decisions (ones that don't have long-term consequences, we hope!) Each week thousands of girls flock to university games ready to drink and prove to guys that they really do care about sports. Maybe they're not all as hot as this, but who cares?

And then there's body painting. NFL games may feature a few warmly dressed women who know the intricacies of the Tampa 2. As mentioned, we'd like to marry those women. When we grow up. For now, we'll chant inanely with girls who have the letter "A" painted across their stomachs. Or the letter "I". Or the letter "S". Or the letter "WHATEVER". We don't really care. Don't judge.

Advantage: College

College: 6 | NFL: 3

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