College vs. Pro

In honor of this special week, I will be focusing quite a bit on the Sooners and college football in general.

Just about everyone who knows me knows that I love college football. I am a Sooner and I feel just like that OU player who said a while back, "Every day I wake up a Sooner." But though I love the Sooners most of all, I love college football in general. Its greatness manifests itself in so many ways. First and foremost, if the NFL is the news anchor with his/her flat, normal "American" accent, college football is the people interviewed by the roving reporter. The anchor reads from a teleprompter and wears make-up and a perfectly-pressed outfit. The anchor is always perfect, even when he/she makes mistakes. It's a little creepy, as though some animatronic robot were reciting the news to you like those telephone voices you hear all the time these days. All anchors report the same stories, assuming that we all care about the same things. In the same way, the NFL is the same stuff over and over, with no real change except in who might be up or down, reflecting the broadest possible spread over the entire country. It is hyped in crazy ways yet still lacking, much like Katie Couric. It is so heavily-rehearsed that it is rare to see a true upset or memorable game. (Seriously, the last great NFL game I can remember was the first Super Bowl win by John Elway against the Packers in '97. Now THAT was a great game...but eleven years?) Its audience enjoys the spectacle, but it's nothing more than a pastime, just another hobby before heading back to fixing the sink or out to the garage to do a little work on the '78 Trans Am. Oh, and maybe they check their fantasy team on Sunday night and Monday night. In fact, outlaw fantasy football and shut off the massive NFL hype machine, and pro football just can't stand on its own.

How many times can you see the same kinds of plays run by the same kinds of players running the same kind of offense, against the same kind of defense, for three-and-a-half hours? Everyone thought Buddy Ryan was a kook because he ran a defense that no one else ran. And everyone runs the West Coast offense. College football, on the other hand, has the wishbone, or the spread, or the spread option, or the run-and-gun, or the fun-and-gun, or the West Coast, or pistol, or whatever the flavor of the day is. Defenses run the 4-3 or the 3-4 or the 4-2-5 or some combination of all of these. College football has trick plays that actually work. As much as I hate to mention it, would you ever see Boise State's Statue-of-Liberty play in overtime against OU used by the Chicago Bears to pick off the Vikings in the playoffs? How about the Jets pulling off a massive win against the Patriots on a last-second, lateral-the-ball-37-times play a la Cal-Stanford?

If pro football is plain-vanilla American, college football reflects the culture and ideals of the various regions of the country. Just look at Big Ten vs. SEC vs. Big 12 vs. Pac-10 vs. ACC vs. Big East. They all have their unique historical tendencies, their cultural high and low points, their moments of glory and their moments of agony. The game inspires true loyalty and passion from its followers, and it represents all of the REAL America, not just those who live in the cities and have enough dough-re-mi to support a pro team. In a country already becoming far too removed from its original rural-agrarian roots, with its elites who joke about "Flyover America" and refer to "soccer moms" (Just another indicator of how out-of-touch those people are...why not "football moms" or "baseball moms" or "basketball moms" or even Sarah Palin's "hockey moms"?? There are a lot more of those, I bet.), college football is still the primary concern of the common folk during fall weekends. And not just for their school's games...it's their conference's games, and their rivals'/enemies' games. College football has variety, it has cultural clashes as well as physical ones. (Look for the "Northern football vs. Southern football" e-mail to see what I am talking about.) It has real traditions, some of which have been going on at their respective schools for 50 years or more. Traditions that the entire school, its students, alumni, and fans, all rally around and yes, even cry about. I still get teary-eyed watching some of OU's great moments, especially if I experienced them in person as a little kid. This isn't to say that the pros don't have traditions and special moments and history, but name one to me. I lived in Broncoland, the Land of Elway for 12 years, and aside from the Ring of Fame and having "Mile High" attached to the stadium name, I can't think of any really special tradition stuff they had. No pro team has an environment as daunting as Texas A&M and their Twelfth Man. No pro team has anything like Florida State's Chief Osceola and his flaming lance at midfield. No pro team has anything that comes close to the Red River Rivalry, or the Michigan-Ohio State game, or the annual Iron Bowl between 'Bama and Auburn. No pro team has anything like Howard's Rock or Touchdown Jesus.

Oh, and don't forget that college football is what started it all. It wasn't like baseball, that had city teams playing each other so that the move to paying players was a relatively simple one. There's still great fondness for the Ivy League in college football, even if they haven't had a prayer of competing with the big boys, because the Ivy League gave us the game.

Even its players are a completely different breed. They don't play for money. They play for pride, for love of the game, just to play for their school (in many cases, their home). Ninety-nine percent of them won't be going to play in the NFL; they'll move on after their eligibility is done and become insurance salesmen or stock brokers or IT workers or grad students or whatever. Some folks, including the wonderful analyst-journalists over at College Football News, try to bring this point out as much as possible, since college is also universally seen (thanks again to the hype machine) as the minor leagues for the NFL. They play through pain, they play as hard as they can, they play and don't cry. Pro players have something of a reputation of whining and complaining, despite the tremendous amounts of money they make. I don't begrudge them the money, since their careers are typically much shorter than in other industries. I DO resent their need to constantly complain about the fact that they get to make lots of money playing a game for a living. You don't hear that from college players. They're people just like us, and they're just glad to be there.

I think I've made my basic point, so that's enough on the subject for now. Thanks for reading along.