Like my esteemed colleague, I’ll dispense with the niceties up front: I’m not here to hate on the college game. I work on Saturdays, but I leave the TV on so I can catch the scores and maybe see a few amazing highlights from the games I miss. I love that some college teams run most—if not all—their offense out of the wishbone, the shotgun or the option formations.

Associated Press

I cheer for certain teams (more on that in a minute), root against countless others, and generally bask in most of the fun associated with the collegiate football scene.

But not for one minute do I believe the college game in anyway is superior to the National Football League – sorry, Ralph. Sure, it’s not perfect, but the NFL is the best thing going – and here’s why.

Sunday is just one letter away from being ‘Funday’

It’s said in the Bible that God rested on the seventh day. Know why? Cause the Saints were playing and he wanted to see if they covered the spread against the 49ers. Chances are they didn’t, but ‘the big guy’ just needed to get off His feet, kick back in the recliner with a bowl of Doritos and watch the game unfold anyway.

The nation is no longer a strictly 9 to 5, Monday through Friday crowd anymore. People work on weekends now. The only people sweating out a Sunday are the school kids who dread having to turn in homework for the following day.

Yeah, I know all too well an NFL fan’s need to imbibe as many ‘alternative beverages’ as possible while watching and cheering on their team, but that’s why God invented antacids and sick days on the eighth day. Can’t go to work on a Tuesday the day after an important Monday night game? Then you can’t hang, bro.

For an NFL fan, Sundays are usually the last big chance to enjoy the weekend before the drudgery of work on a Monday. And hey, what better way to ease into the work week than with a game on Monday nights?

“Any given Sunday”

I’m referring to the phrase implying that anything is possible on the football field, not the lousy Oliver Stone movie which carries the same name.

I loved seeing Appalachian State pull the upset of the year over Michigan, as well as hearing about Nicholls State’s triumph over Rice, but college football, with the exception of the occasional anomaly, is a case of the “haves” and “have nots.”

Take, for instance, the SEC. You have your top tier teams: LSU, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia and Auburn; your middle of the road crew: Kentucky, South Carolina, Arkansas and Alabama; and the back of the pack: Vanderbilt, Mississippi State and Ole Miss.

Boise State, despite going undefeated last season, will never get enough respect to warrant consideration for a National Title berth. When Tulane went 12-0 they were barely a blip on the national radar.

Parity is the name of the game in the NFL. Any team has the capability of winning at any given time (with the exception of the Atlanta Falcons this year). Teams routinely come from the back of the pack to actually win their division and make the playoffs, just as the division leader tumbles out of contention. Teams can turn their fortunes around much quicker in the NFL.

Tailgating, smailgating!

Yeah, I guess you could start tailgating days in advance for a college game, but that only works if you’re a college student who doesn’t mind skipping classes constantly (hello 2.0 GPA!) or if you’ve built up enough vacation time to make a real trip out of the whole thing. Give me the night before and the day of to get my game face on. My buddies and I began a tradition last year when we chipped in to buy Saints season tickets. Every Sunday morning before a home game we get up and meet for breakfast at Slim Goodie’s Diner on Magazine Street.

The whole idea of camping outside a stadium more than a day before kickoff is…what’s the word I’m looking for? Asinine.

Schedules

This falls back to the parity argument. Guys like USC, Ohio State and all the other big dogs can fill out their schedules with cream puff teams in order to pad their records. That crap doesn’t happen in the NFL. Yeah, one division may get matched up with a far weaker division for the season, but those schedules have been determined well in advance and the NFL owners are not given their choice of opponents. Otherwise, the Detroit Lions and Houston Texans would be plenty busy this year.

Polls & Playoffs

If the NFL had a preseason poll, it might something like this (and we’re assuming the NFL writers get 62 votes each week):

1. Indianapolis Colts (46)

2. New England Patriots (9)

3. San Diego Chargers (6)

4. New Orleans Saints (1)

5. Baltimore Ravens

And so on and so forth…

The idea that we as fans spend months out of the year hoping a few dozen people think our team is good enough to be in the championship game is beyond ridiculous. Ralph argues that people like me who’re fed up with the NCAA’s poll system and the BCS Bowl Series are a good thing for the game since it means we’ll argue about the whole thing and keep it in the national conversation.

College football is kept in the national spotlight because want their football fix, be it college or pro. When a system is so atrociously organized and it’s postseason so horribly botched, I simply view it as an inferior league.

To argue that people would lose interest in college football if they went to a playoff by comparing it to college basketball is just plain nutty. College football teams, by and large, play about 12 games before the Bowl season begins. College basketball teams play over 30 games before the NCAA Tournament starts. Translation: college hoops has a longer season—more games to play—before the eventual pay off of a playoff. And because there’s so many teams involved in the tournament, the casual sports fan says “I won’t pay attention until the tourney is set because all those other teams are probably garbage anyway.”

But in football, a 64 team playoff would be impossible. So would a 32 team playoff and a 16 team playoff. But perhaps an eight team playoff is feasible. Or maybe at least four teams could play in short tourney for the right to be national champions.

And don’t give me the ‘one and done is more compelling’ argument. If a team loses one game, they still would have a chance to make this special tourney. Hey, it works for the NFL.