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One more thing: I feel like the Super Bowl rarely has fantastic finishes. At least not when compared to the college championship game. Brady's comeback a couple of years ago was amazing, but the ending of the game wasn't. It was a pitch and run from the 2-yard line. The Malcolm Butler interception a couple of years before that was more head-scratching than anything since most people were in pure disbelief that the Seahawks would actually attempt a pass in that situation. Even if the games are tight, the finishes are rarely ever memorable.
But who's going to forget Vince Young running it in against USC in the Rose Bowl on 4th and 5 for the final score? Last play of the game, they score a TD and win, or they fail to score and lose. Everything about that moment was magical including the shower of roses and confetti at the end.
Obviously you haven't discussed this with fans of the other Big XII schools. As a matter of fact, I'm still PO'd about that phantom PI call you guys got in the game in Dallas on your last drive.
Meh, they screw up both ways most every game - but y’all haven’t been worked over as thoroughly as UT in too many games to list.
Not to mention the decades long lack of calling holding on your Sooners.
I do recall a bogus out of bounds hit on McCoy being called ten years ago. Then your punter doing a well rehearsed fall to draw a roughing penalty. Lol
But i’m actually talking about a crew making 5-6 really bad calls or non-calls that clearly change the outcome of a game. There were more than that in Grant Teaff’s last game against Texas and okielite vs UT several years ago. Last Saturday in the TT/UT game there were a bunch including a Tech player being ejected on a bad call.
As far as your claim of the PI call, I’d have to watch it again.
But who's going to forget Vince Young running it in against USC in the Rose Bowl on 4th and 5 for the final score? Last play of the game, they score a TD and win, or they fail to score and lose. Everything about that moment was magical including the shower of roses and confetti at the end.
Both the pro and college level football games move too slowly in my book. The players spend half the game standing around, and then for some reason they're "tired" at the end. At any rate, of the two I prefer watching a college game unless it involves the local pro team. College ball has a lot more variety in styles and it's fun watching the kids enjoy the match.
Nothing sucks energy out of you like playing defense when the other team goes on a long sustained drive, then your offense goes three and out, and there you are again. Have that happen very often and by the fourth quarter you are really gassed.
One more thing: I feel like the Super Bowl rarely has fantastic finishes. At least not when compared to the college championship game. Brady's comeback a couple of years ago was amazing, but the ending of the game wasn't. It was a pitch and run from the 2-yard line. The Malcolm Butler interception a couple of years before that was more head-scratching than anything since most people were in pure disbelief that the Seahawks would actually attempt a pass in that situation. Even if the games are tight, the finishes are rarely ever memorable.
But who's going to forget Vince Young running it in against USC in the Rose Bowl on 4th and 5 for the final score? Last play of the game, they score a TD and win, or they fail to score and lose. Everything about that moment was magical including the shower of roses and confetti at the end.
I don't know if I agree. Plenty of dud games in the college: hit-or-miss. The Super Bowls have been generally climatic over a long stretch. Yesteryear, yeah the Super Bowls were notoriously lopsided during the days when the NFC dominated the AFC. Even during that era though, one exception was the Bills-Giants, SB XXV. Maybe the best "big game" I've ever seen on the gridiron. Overall, I'd consider college vs pro a draw when it comes to the element of exciting finishes in championship games.
As for some of the other comments, I don't agree with the scoring being a problem in the pros. The NFL has gone bonkers this year- the scoring is plenty. I don't need these ridiculous 62-54 finals left-and-right that are ubiquitous in college. It is more a by-product in the NFL of dumb rule changes and coddling the quarterback. In college, the defenses seems so far behind the 8-ball in most games. If I wanted arena football, I'd watch that. Again, both the NFL and college has drawbacks and things I favor in each over the other. But when it comes to offenses dominating all the time, I give a thumbs down to both pro and college. Give me a hard fought game, both sides of the ball, 14-10 final any day of the week.
I love college football, but so many teams still run foolish gimmick offenses and they also lack a real playoff. Those two things hold it back from being better than the NFL.
But who's going to forget Vince Young running it in against USC in the Rose Bowl on 4th and 5 for the final score? Last play of the game, they score a TD and win, or they fail to score and lose. Everything about that moment was magical including the shower of roses and confetti at the end.
The Rose Bowl has had a few memorable endings, including last year's double-overtime victory by Georgia.
It is funny; this year I have found a greater/wider gap in my personal preferences between college football and the NFL than any other year previously. I love football: traditionally I have loved college football intensely and the NFL just a slight hare less. This year, the gap has become much wider: I really loved college football right now much more than the NFL, which is now competing for me with the NBA in terms of even just my favorite pro sports league.
There are so many reasons that I have come to strongly prefer the college game over the NFL; some of them have already been mentioned in this thread. I will try to lay out an all-encapsulating list here:
1. Every game is a huge deal in college: Now in my 40s, I have been religiously a life-long Notre Dame (ND) football fan. This year, the ND v. Michigan game in week one of the season had huge implications. Notre Dame beat Michigan in early September, and as long as both teams win out the rest of the way, Notre Dame will be seeded higher than Michigan in the CF Playoff - and rightfully so - based upon their head-to-head win.
More broadly though, each and every week every outcome of key college football games can - and often time does - make or break a team's entire season. This is primarily attributable to 1) The extremely high quantity of qualifying teams in the FBS versus the NFL, and 2) The very low quantity of games played in the regular season of CFB (12 or 13 total); secondarily, the very small CF Playoff field/pool of only four qualifying teams also plays a strong role.
I love how each and every week is an elimination or an establishment week in college football: games mean heartache or highest of highs week in and week out. In the NFL? Meh...just make sure to go 9-7.
2. Pass Interference rule: I cannot stand - literally it drives me nuts - how in the NFL teams are so frequently rewarded by just chucking a 65 yard bomb down the field to a WR who is not open in any way...a DB and the WR have some minor or incidental contact...and sure enough...here comes a flag.
NFL DB's have it tough enough in the video game offensive game that the NFL has created for itself; why WR's are so often rewarded with garbage pass interference flags is beyond anyone's guess, but it sucks.
But what really sucks about the pass interference situation in the NFL is that the rule of placing the ball at the spot of the foul, or, even worse, at essentially the goal line if the foul was deemed to occur in the end zone. This rule might be more defensible if it was determined that the call was made correctly 100% of the time, however, pass interference is a highly subjective call as it is, and as stated above, the WR tends to get the benefit of the doubt way too much as it is in the NFL.
Over and over and over again, I just have seen NFL teams rewarded way too much/too often with the ball basically a few inches from a touchdown after getting a highly questionable PI flag in the end zone from 30, 40, etc., yards away. It is just too severe a consequence for a subjective call that is often called incorrectly.
Meanwhile, I love the college PI rule. 15 yards is a steep, tough penalty; giving up 15 yards sucks (that is why personal fouls are 15 yards). However, 15 yards is not irreconcilably devastating such as what a PI in the NFL often is - and certainly is when it is a questionable or a blown call.
I also like the strategy that allows a defender...if they see that they are beaten on a pass...to willingly interfere, losing the battle (via a PI penalty) but being able to live to fight the war another day.
3. The uncomplicated nature of roughing the passer rule in college: Okay, so I am admittedly a big Green Bay Packers' fan and the fact that the Packers were the victims of a couple huge, back-breaking blown roughing the passer calls in the early weeks of this season (Clay Matthews) admittedly probably makes me hate the NFL's emphasis this year on roughing the passer disproportionally high. However, I sometimes don't understand why the NFL makes life so hard on themselves.
College seems to get it just fine: roughing the passer is obviously a major penalty in college, and sure, it gets called incorrectly in college too. It just though doesn't seem to be nearly as complicated to understand in college, just doesn't seem to get blown on tick-tack calls nearly as much, and frankly doesn't seem to impact the overall arch of a given game nearly as often as it does in the NFL.
That brings me to...
4. The NFL continuing to tinker with rules to create video game offense: The college game can have video game offensive outputs regularly as well (just look at traditionally the PAC-12 and Big 12 where video game offensive outputs are a regular occurrence), however, college blends a whole plethora of offensive styles and types and a whole lot of defensive styles and types, and as a result, you get an overall game filled with a lot of dominating offenses but also a lot of dominating defenses. As a whole, it just seems like the college game's attitude is to "just let them play" and then let the chips fall where they may.
Meanwhile, it seems like the attitude of the NFL on a yearly basis is "let's see how we can tweak rules more and more to enhance offenses" because there is this prevailing sort of attitude that the masses of ticket-paying and TV-watching NFL fans crave nothing but 52-47 type of games.
I don't know if that is right or not. My gut says it is not, because I love defenses as much as offenses and want to watch that struggle envelop. Just like in the late-1990's supposedly all MLB fans were dying to see as many bulked up guys hit 60+ home runs as possible - I never understood that then, seeing the abnormal bastardizing of the game as something fans craved in mass numbers. But perhaps the statistics show fans do crave an abnormal emphasis on video game offense and to just see one or two punts per game...if that is the case, well then, I am just in a severe minority and think that most of the fans are fools.
If throwing for 4500 yards in a season isn't particularly special anymore, or tossing six TD passes per game isn't particularly special, then why should I give a damn when I see it happen?
Its not the offensive nature of the NFL that I object to as much as its the NFL as an entity trying continuously to tinker with their game to create a super-offensive emphasized league that I hate.
5. The pomp and tradition and storied rivalries of the amateur college game: The NFL has evolved - probably necessarily so - over the last 20 years into a more player/personality-driven league similar to what happened in the NBA with an emphasis on Jordan, Bird, Magic, and James instead of the emphasis being on the Bulls, Celtics, Lakers, and Cavs/Heat/Lakers. And due to the business structure of the NFL (and NBA) this was probably just a very predictable evolution of their leagues.
College football is big business of course, too, but given the limited timeframe any individual player ever stays at one institution, college football's emphasis necessarily (and as a result a good outcome) falls still on the programs, their histories, their traditions, their rivalries. The players are obviously very important, but their stays at their respective institutions are necessarily finite. This leaves a continued progression year to year of a focus on the program, not on the star.
6. An overall preference for the general rules of the college game versus the NFL: Here, things are not as clear-cut for me. I don't know if I prefer the college's one-foot inbounds for a catch rule or the NFL's two-feet in bounds. I don't know if I prefer being down making you down (college) versus needing to be touched down (the NFL); hell, I really don't know if I prefer college's traditional extra point versus the NFL's 33-yard PAT.
However, I guess overall if I just had to group all of the rules into one or the other, I would take college's rules. I probably prefer the clock stopping on every first down but then there not being any two-minute warnings such as what college offers. I do definitely prefer college's use of instant replay more than the NFL's (again, it seems here like the NFL makes things unnecessarily complicated on themselves). While the college overtime rules are polarizing and admittedly imperfect, I still probably prefer college's overtime versus the NFL's OT rules; I hate ties being an outcome, and you still have too many ties in the NFL.
This isn't a huge plus to the college game, but it is still a plus.
7. The attitudes - or perceived attitudes - prevalent in today's NFL game: Yeah, I am an old fuddy duddy. But count me in the group of fans who was highly offended and turned off last year in the NFL for the kneeling and other displays during the national anthem.
My take on that whole controversy was: I have no problem whatsoever - WHATSOEVER! - about protesting perceived racial injustices. Hell, protest en masse away, and it won't turn me off! Yet why on God's green earth do you use the national anthem - one of the few things going today that should be fully agreeable to Americans of all political persuasions - left, right, middle, and other - as your venue to protest? That should have been like the one sacred thing that was agreed upon to NOT protest during. So yeah, that really rubbed me the wrong way, and that the players by and large didn't seem to get that lingers on with me.
Meanwhile, the college game offers Navy and Notre Dame standing at mutual reverence and respect for each other's fight songs. Give that to me any day. There still seems to be some reverence, some respect left in the college game.
Secondly, color me among the fans not amused at the NFL touchdown celebrations: 1) Since as I have described above there are seemingly 15 touchdowns a game...its really not that special anymore to get a touchdown in today's NFL, so why are you acting like its the rarest form of victory ever?; but beyond that, 2) Its like the NFL has merged into the classic No Fun League, the most mundane, ho-hum league, and to compensate for that boringness, the NFL green lighted ridiculous touchdown celebrations. Its total overcompensating. It seems and feels so contrived.
That I don't need to watch a choreographed dance routine in college when a touchdown is scored is huge for me.
8. The subjectivity of college rankings: I.E., The debates!: While an argument could be made that I would accept that the LACK of subjectivity of the NFL game is an advantage for the NFL, I think overall sports are what they are: forms of entertainment.
And we spend so, so, so many hours debating college rankings, seeding, etc., it keeps us busy and engaged in a way during the six days a week that college isn't played that otherwise we wouldn't be - and aren't for any other sports, including the NFL.
In the NFL's coverage, there are so many contrived human interest stories and pointless debates (such as some entity's "power rankings) because...for six days a week, what else are you going to talk about?
But in college football it is all about where teams are ranked, who is going to the playoffs, where they'll be seeded in the playoffs, whose going to a New Year's Bowl, etc. Its fun and highly engaging.
Overall, I feel like I am forgetting/overlooking some other factors that make me prefer the NFL game. I wish I could remember the others! Perhaps I will come back and edit the list if I recall the others. Overall, really this year has confirmed a large gap for me: college football is clearly the preference over the NFL!
was about to say the same thing: where would anyone get the idea college football moves faster? Now, as for which is better watch, that depends on the teams: this year our favorite college teams all such, but out stand by pro teams are shining. So for us, it is NFL. Next year might be a different story.
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As a matter of fact, I'm still PO'd about that phantom PI call you guys got in the game in Dallas on your last drive. 
