When ABC added Dennis Miller to its “Monday Night Football” broadcast crew this summer, many critics interpreted it as a sign that NFL football couldn’t hold an audience on its own.
College football fans knew that long before Miller showed up with his bag of quips. College football will never need to put a clown in the booth to spruce up ratings. On second thought, ESPN did hire Lee Corso. On third thought, Corso had been in a football stadium before he started mouthing off.
Fact is, it doesn’t matter whether the NFL brings in Dennis Miller, Dennis the Menace or Denis Menke. It will never be half as interesting as college football.
The colleges have real history. By the time the nation discovered the NFL in that famous Baltimore-New York championship game in 1958, Notre Dame and Michigan already had produced multiple coaching legends, Minnesota and Army had won multiple national titles and Oklahoma had won a record 47 games in a row.
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College football fans are smarter. We know this because they don’t pay full price to watch exhibitions. Tears are common at college football stadiums, especially in the parents section, where the proud mamas sit. The only time you see tears in an NFL stadium is when a placekicker misses an extra point and the home team fails to cover, or when some sap realizes he has just paid full price to watch an exhibition.
Every college football season brings a new crop of heroes-in-waiting. In pro football every season brings a new address for Jim Harbaugh.
College football has regional rivalries with national importance: Auburn-Alabama, Florida-Florida State and Ohio State-Michigan, to name a few. Pro football had Pittsburgh-Cleveland, but then Cleveland moved to Baltimore. The new Pittsburgh-Cleveland isn’t a rivalry, it’s a train wreck. Green Bay-Chicago is still a rivalry, but no one cares outside Wisconsin, Illinois and a corner of the Upper Peninsula that doesn’t have cable.
Sunday mornings are for church, not tailgating.
The University of Texas won’t move its games to Louisville if it doesn’t get a better stadium deal in Austin. Does anyone really believe the Rams, late of Cleveland and Los Angeles, are going to stay in St. Louis? Or that the Cardinals, late of Chicago and St. Louis, are going to stay in Phoenix? Better yet, does anyone really care?
In college football some of the cheerleaders are studying to be surgeons. In the NFL the cheerleaders have been worked on by surgeons.
How is it that Northwestern didn’t have to miss a home date when Dyche Stadium was renovated, yet when the Bears fix up Soldier Field they are going to have to vacate the stadium for a year?
The NFL has a longer police blotter. All the lawbreaking at Colorado, Oklahoma and Nebraska over the years doesn’t add up to one good weekend for the Carolina Panthers.
Third-and-2 should never be considered a passing situation, but it is in the NFL.
In college football the Pacific-10 Conference is located along the Pacific Ocean, the Big East is in the East and Conference USA is in the USA. Geography is simple, huh? Then how come Arizona is in the NFC East and Atlanta is in the NFC West?
College football has better hospitality. When Texas coach Mack Brown invites the entire Longhorns press corps to his house, he feeds them steaks and regales them with stories around the pool. When former Bears and Saints coach Mike Ditka invites reporters to his restaurant, he feeds them cafeteria food and sticks them with the bill for valet parking.
In certain Tennessee hamlets, you can still find an argument over whether Notre Dame’s Paul Hornung or Tennessee’s Johnny Majors deserved the Heisman Trophy in 1956. Can anyone even name the NFL’s MVP of 1956?
The most devious college football coach will never be as devious as any Irsay.
The language of college football is a delight. When a Southern college football coach laments his team’s tackling, he’ll say something like, “We ain’t got but one fella who can hitchee.” The typical NFL coach sounds like Al Gore talking about global warming.
One usually has to go to college to run a college football program. The woman who runs the Cleveland/Los Angeles/St. Louis Rams only had to go to the altar.
A big part of the college football experience is strolling the campus before kickoff. A big part of the NFL experience is finding the Meadowlands exit on the New Jersey Turnpike.
College football is filled with great moments: Roy Riegels’ wrong-way run in the 1929 Rose Bowl. Billy Cannon’s winding 89-yard punt return against Ole Miss on Halloween night in 1959. Cal’s five-lateral, 57-yard touchdown return to stun Stanford in the Big Game of 1982.
Pro football’s greatest moment came when NBC decided to pre-empt a 1968 Jets-Raiders game to show “Heidi.” We’ll take “Heidi” and give the points.