Where I Stand: NFL vs College Football, Pt. 1

I have a couple of friends that we'll refer to, in great Ann Landers style, as Meldy and Ike. Meldy and Ike are gigantic football fans. They get really excited every time it's getting close to fall and practices start. They start dreaming about tailgating and sitting in front of the TV to catch the game for the week. I'm like that as well. The only difference being on which day we're most excited about football. They prefer their football to be on a Saturday. I prefer the variety that arrives in my TV after church is over. The three of us (Meldy, Ike, and I) recently had a fairly lengthy email debate about why we prefer the one that we prefer. What I decided to do is to use the forum that I have here to share with every one of my readers (we're up to five now! Hi, Mom!) my reasoning as well. You're free to disagree. Feel free to comment whether you agree or disagree. This will cover two of my points with a subsequent post to cover the other two (or more if the mood strikes me).

Padding the schedule with pansies. It bothers me that a major-conference school goes and schedules at least two or three pansies in their schedule to ensure a couple of easy wins to make sure that they're bowl eligible. One of the examples that comes to mind (because of proximity more than anything else) is the Minnesota Gophers. Every year, they're playing people who are there strictly to be beaten down so that Gophers fans can get themselves overly excited about the possibility of going to a more "high profile" bowl game. Then they usually come crashing back to reality when they blow big leads or just plain get demolished by the more legitimate teams in the Big Ten. Look at the Gophers' schedule this year: Their first game was against Kent State (44-0 win). They play Cal this year, which is one of the very few respectable non-conference games in recent memory. However, that's balanced by the fact that they're playing the North Dakota State University Bison. That's right, they're playing a team that has been D1-AA for less than five years. Way to go out on a limb there, guys. In the NFL, a team plays against each of its divisional opponents twice during the season. Each division also faces two other divisions (each team in each division plays each team in the other division). This is not picked randomly or by throwing a huge wad of cash at a school to come in to your stadium to get beat up. There's also a very new and innovative concept called a playoff system. More on that later.

"It's all about the student-athlete." The fact that these kids are supposed to be armatures is brought out whenever one of these kids has broken some NCAA rule (like getting a ride home from a member of the coaching staff in twenty below weather). They're expected to maintain the purity of the game. They're out there strictly for the love of football and the love of their school. This is one of the biggest lines of bull that exists in modern sports. It's not all about the student athlete. It's not all about school pride. With very few exceptions, it's all about the money. For some of the kids playing, it's about getting an education so that they can have a career after sports (very admirable, but still about lessening their schooling costs). For some it's about being on a national stage so they they have a shot at going up to the next level for, you guessed it, big-money contracts. Many of the coaches have gigantic, million-dollar contracts for it, but the students see not a penny of any of it except in the form of, for many, token scholarships with the full-rides reserved for a select few. The love of money is also the reason that we don't have an implementation of the afore-mentioned playoff system (new and revolutionary though it may be). "What about the million-dollar spoiled athletes in the NFL, though? You prefer watching someone like Terrell Owens instead of a student athlete?" Here's the thing: I hate the pretense that the NCAA tries to force down our throat about their greatest concern being about the students. The NFL freely admits they're a business and that money is the major driving-force behind the majority of the decisions that are made. Do you prefer having a pastor that says he's perfect and you need to be just like him, or the pastor who says that he's a sinner, too, and we all need to help each other out? Which one is more likely to have a scandal that completely tarnishes people and their organizations? Meldy at this point, of course, brought up the Love Boat scandal of the Vikings last year. I countered with Gary Barnett, whose program while he was the coach at Colorado University was accused of using very inappropriate parties as recruiting tools. Let me point out that I find what some of the Vikings players did on Lake Minnetonka to be morally reprehensible. However, they are adults. If the party had taken place in a private home, there would have been no criminal charges. They did something dumb by taking it onto a boat. Again, morally reprehensible. In the case of Colorado, they're using alcohol (among other things that I really don't want to mention on this site) to be recruiting kids who are legally under age. Getting back to T.O. for a moment, I don't like how he goes about things. The largest problem I have with how things went down in Philidelphia is that he was seeking more money when he was already under contract. If he was a free agent, I would have no problem with him trying to get the most value that he can. It's a business, and it's all about the money. Just like college football. The NFL is just able to admit it.

My other two points will follow next week.