Every Friday, the Friday Five will rank something in the world of college football -- anything and everything from the logical to the illogical. This week we rank five reasons college football is better than the NFL.
The NFL season began on Thursday night, and with it came a familiar feeling.
I love football. I loved playing it when I was younger, and I love watching it now. I love breaking down the game in my mind as I'm watching it take place in front of me. I love writing about it for a living. I mean, seriously, I get paid to watch football and write about it. It's amazing.
I love college football, and I love the NFL, but I love one more.
You see, while the Steelers and Patriots were playing in Foxboro, there was another football game going on. This one was between Western Kentucky and Louisiana Tech, two teams that you wouldn't exactly consider "must-see" television. Hell, Fox Sports 1, which was showing the game, didn't even send a broadcast crew to the scene. They just called the game from their studio in Los Angeles.
While this secondary college game and the NFL season opener were both going on, guess which I was more interested in watching? The game between the directional and the technical school, not two storied NFL franchises.
The college game is just better, and with the NFL season beginning in full force this weekend, I couldn't think of a more apt time to tell you why.
5. College football hasn't been totally taken over by fantasy sports ... yet. I add the "yet" simply because, with the recent rise of daily fantasy sports, it could change eventually. Right now though, fantasy sports hasn't commandeered the college game. You know one of the reasons I wasn't that interested in the NFL game last night? I didn't have any fantasy players in it.
To be clear, I love fantasy football. I've been playing in leagues since I was in college, and I'm currently in three leagues this season. It's a lot of fun for me. But with each passing year, aside from my interest in the Chicago Bears, I find the NFL becoming more and more of a fantasy vehicle. I want the Bears to win, and I want my fantasy teams to win (these days, I have to rely on my fantasy teams a lot more). So, I'm more interested in players than teams or games.
That's not the case in college. In college football, I'm interested in the game taking place in front of my eyes. I'm trying to figure out what's happened, what's going to happen next and what it's all going to mean for both the future of the current game, and the rest of the season.
College football is still about college football. The NFL is about a million other things.
4. College football spends less time talking about stupid things. Which isn't to say there aren't a lot of dumb things being talked about when it comes to college football. It's 2015, schools are pulling in millions and millions of dollars from television, and we're still debating whether the players should get a bigger piece of the pie.
But it doesn't come close to the things NFL fans and media talk about.
I mean, the NFL literally spent the last seven months talking about deflated footballs. Who deflated the footballs? Did deflating the footballs actually have an impact? Who knew about the deflated footballs? Was Tom Brady acting alone? Was there a second deflater on the grassy knoll? Should Tom Brady be in prison?
And then, after all of the talk, nothing came of it. Common sense finally prevailed, but not until you spent eight months having your brain turned to mush after being bombarded by this dumbass nonsense.
And after the NFL season finally began on Thursday, what's the one thing everybody's talking about the next morning? Headsets. Freaking headsets. What a dumb league.
3. College football handles pass interference penalties much better. This is a very personal preference, and I must say that I hate pass interference in just about every form. If it's going to exist, however, the college game's handling of it is far superior to the NFL. How pass interference can be a spot foul when it's so entirely subjective is just a ridiculous idea. A ridiculous idea that the NFL utilizes.
Bad pass interference calls are going to impact games on a weekly basis, but they have too much of an impact in the NFL. You can basically put together a game plan of "just throw deep and draw a flag" in the NFL.
In college, no matter where the foul occurs, it's 15 yards at most. That's the right way to handle it.
Wait, no, the right way to handle it is to get rid of it altogether (instead of pass interference, just call defensive holding if a defender grabs, incidental contact is just incidental contact for the love of all that's good), but limiting it to 15 yards is the better way to go about it.
2. College football has so much more variety. If you're a real fan of football, the intricacies of offenses and defenses and how things work, I don't know how you can't prefer the college game to the NFL.
If NFL offenses were an ice cream shop, it'd only serve three flavors. There'd be vanilla, chocolate, and mint chocolate chip. Anybody who orders the mint chocolate chip would then be ostracized by everybody else in the ice cream shop, told how horrible it tastes, and that it's just a fad that will never last.
The college football ice cream shop has 100 different flavors, and you're free to try them all. Whatever works and whatever you like. This is college, after all, a free exchange of ideas and philosophies is encouraged on the football field, and in the classrooms.
Any time you see some "new" innovation in an NFL game that analysts go nuts over, it's usually something you saw in a college game 10 years ago.
1. College football isn't just a quarterback sport. This is a byproduct of having more variety on offense in college. Now in football, no matter what level you're playing, the quarterback is typically the most important position on the field. If you have a great quarterback, it can elevate your team to another level.
That's true in college, and it's true in the NFL.
In the NFL, however, unless you have a "franchise" quarterback, you aren't winning these days. Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees have all been amazing quarterbacks, and their teams are just about always going to be good. If you don't have one of them, though, it's an uphill climb (seriously, those four have won seven of the last 14 Super Bowls). Essentially, you're doomed to mediocrity unless you have a Hall of Fame quarterback these days.
That's just not the case in college. You can win a national title with a three-star quarterback if you surround that player with enough talent and put them in the right system.
Just look at the recent history. Since 2005, there have been eight different starting quarterbacks to win a national title. Do you know how many of them are currently starting quarterbacks in the NFL? Two (and one of them hasn't taken his first snap in a regular season game yet). They're Cam Newton and Jameis Winston.
You need to put together great teams to win a national title in college, not just a great quarterback.
Honorable Mention: Better overtime in college, better atmosphere in college, college isn't as corporate, Chris Berman doesn't cover college football, the NCAA isn't quite as evil as Roger Goodell
