Heresy (Part 3 of 3)

This is the final part of a three-part series from guest contributor Pat Downes on the superiority of college football to pro football. To read the first part, “History,” click here. To read the second part, “Variety,” click here.

Passion

College football is obviously more colorful than pro football. College football has mascots and marching bands. Fight songs and pep rallies. Every team – every single team – has unique traditions surrounding the game that border on the sacred. Dotting the “i” at Ohio State. Yell Leaders at Texas A&M. Hook ’em Horns and the Gator Chomp. Howard’s Rock and the House that Rock Built. Outside of JerryWorld (and I would argue that Dallas’s traditions are mostly contrived), pro football does not have nearly as much color.

But this is mere pageantry. Pageantry is merely one tangible expression of something much deeper – passion. Passion is a feeling. It is the deep, almost familial connection that the fan feels for his or her team. Pro football fans may have passion for their teams, but they don’t – really, they can’t – feel it as deeply as college football fans.

In the first installment of this series, I argued that college football was superior to pro football because of its history. College football’s immense popularity going back for decades and centuries, and the legends and stories that originated throughout those years, form a thread in the narrative of today’s games, which enable us to share an experience with ancestors that we never knew.

In part two, I argued that college football’s variety, which derives in part from the diversity of the institutions playing the game, makes college football superior. College teams are unique, local institutions that communities take pride in. Pro franchises, on the other hand, are like bland, cookie-cutter chain stores.

In a way, passion is a by-product of history and variety. College football fans feel a connection to our team’s legends and heroes from ages past. And we feel connected to our teams as representatives of unique, local institutions, with fundamental missions that are more meaningful than simply winning a division and making a nice run in the playoffs.

Those connections extend beyond the teams’ geographical and alumni bases. Teams like BYU and Notre Dame have religious identities that inspire national followings in certain religious or ethnic communities. Army, Navy and Air Force inspire followings within the military, and among the broad segment of the population that admire the commitment to country made by those teams’ players and their classmates. In some parts of the country without the population base to support a pro franchise (or any other institutions of cultural significance) – for example, Alabama, Nebraska, and recently, Boise, Idaho – college football teams serve as focal points for the development of regional identity, and inspire deeply passionate followings.

In addition to all of this, different schools stand for different things. Some institutions, unfortunately, stand for the uglier side of sports; for cheating and criminality, for corruption and exploitation. On the other hand, teams like Notre Dame and Stanford, at their best, stand for a combination of athletic and academic excellence, and for managing their teams ethically. Other institutions, like many state schools and the teams in the MEAC, pride themselves on providing opportunities for underprivileged students, or students from racial or ethnic communities who did not have such opportunities in years past.

The NFL has none of this. Sure, it has fans. Maybe it even has fans who can be described, in a narrow sense, as passionate. They follow their team religiously. They live and die by the win-loss record. And I say this not to denigrate the depth of their feeling, but, really, what is that NFL passion based on? Maybe – at best – that passion is based on fond memories of a parent who was a fan. But usually it’s based on little more than geography. Very few folks outside of Seattle have any affinity for the Seahawks. Unless your dear, departed father was a Seattle native (or your last name is Hasselbeck), there’s nothing unique about the Seahawks that would attract any sort of following outside of Washington state.

What are the monumental stories and legends of the Seahawks’ history? Who are the mist-shrouded demigods and heroes of Seahawks’ lore? What unique characteristics do the Seahawks have that make them more worthy of your attention than any other franchise? More importantly, what do the Seahawks stand for? It sounds silly to even ask these questions of most pro franchises.

I understand that there are people out there who love the NFL, and never really had any reason to follow college football. If you’re one of these people, that’s ok. It’s not a mark of poor character, or an indication that you’re lacking in any way.

But you are missing something.

Maybe, if you’re lucky, the ongoing collective bargaining negotiations in the NFL will blow up, and you’ll be able to focus your full attention next year on the greatest, purest expression of the world’s best game: college football.

Heresy (Part 2 of 3)

This the second of a three-part series from guest contributor Pat Downes on the superiority of college football to pro football. To read the first part, “History,” click here.

Variety

If you watched the Super Bowl on Sunday, you should be grateful for the innovators who decided that different teams should wear different color uniforms. Otherwise, even if you were paying attention, it would have been hard to tell the teams apart. On offense, both the Packers and Steelers run a modified West Coast offense. On defense, both run a 3-4.

And it isn't just the Packers and Steelers. As Chris Brown of Smart Football points out, every team in the NFL runs just about the same offense.

Each team bases its offense on the same five running plays, and a horizontal, timing-based passing game. Defensively, about half the teams run a 3-4, and the other half run a more “traditional” 4-3. The trend is clearly in favor of the 3-4, which, in a few years may become as ubiquitous on the defensive side as Bill Walsh’s Stanford/San Francisco offense.

With college football, on the other hand, especially on the offensive side, pleasure is none, if not diversified. On any given Saturday, you can turn on your TV and witness:

*A traditional power running offense, with tight splits on the line, beefy linemen in three-point stances, fullbacks, and multiple tight ends, forcing the ball down the defense’s collective throat (with the occasional vertical, field-stretching play action bomb);

* The aforementioned West Coast (a.k.a. pro-style) offense, with heavy doses of zone blocking, a zone-read running game, and a short, horizontal, exquisitely timed passing game;

* The now passé “run and shoot,” including the “fun 'n' gun” pass-fest that Spurrier ran at Florida;

* Georgia Tech and the service academies employing the all-running-all-the-time triple-option;

* The spread (run-heavy variety), as pioneered by recently departed coaching heavyweights Urban Meyer and Rich Rodriquez, with the quarterback in the shotgun, the linemen split wide, and up on two feet, and various option and West Coast elements thrown in;

* The spread (pass-heavy variety), as engineered by coaches like Mike Leach and his disciples;

* Various adaptations of the spread, including: Nevada’s “pistol” offense, with the quarterback in a “semi” shotgun, and the running back directly behind the quarterback (which improves the rushing opportunities offered by a traditional shotgun and an offset running back); the old single-wing throwback known as the Wildcat (lately adopted by some forward-thinking NFL offensive coordinators); and Oregon’s “blur” offense, which adds a no-huddle, fast-paced, defense-exhausting element to the spread; and, finally,

* Various offenses incorporating elements of two or more of these systems.

College football has long been an incubator for innovation. Some schools lack financial resources. Some have institutional or geographical limitations. Every school has to compete with 119 other Division 1-A programs. As a result, not every team can land the 6’7” 310 -pound offensive linemen with freakish athletic ability, or the skill position players who can run the 40-yard dash in less than 4.5 seconds. If you want to move the ball down the field at these schools, you have to find a way to do it with the players you have. For decades, college coaches have developed the systems described above (and a bunch more besides), to do just that.

In the NFL, on the other hand, there are 32 teams that share television revenue, and thus have roughly equal resources, equal access to a relatively deep talent pool, and a uniform salary cap. Unless your team is ineptly managed (i.e., run by Daniel Snyder or Al Davis), you are going to fill your roster with players at every position who have all, or nearly all, of the attributes that you're looking for. You’re going to find a left tackle with near-ideal height and weight, with long arms, and freakish agility. If you run a 3-4 defense, you’re going to find a 340-pound nose tackle who can consume two blockers. You’re going to find a running back who can pick up the blitz, catch the ball as an outlet receiver, take a handoff, pick the right hole, and hit it hard.

Some players are better than others, sure, but in relative terms, at most positions, there really isn't that much daylight between the best starter in the league, and the worst starter. Every team, more or less, has the tools they need to run the offense they want, and there is no incentive to innovate as there is in college.

In some ways, the NFL is the sporting equivalent of the string of fast food joints off the freeway exit, or the suburban strip mall. It’s the same damn thing all over America. The fan in San Diego is consuming the same product as the fan in Indianapolis and the fan in Atlanta. It’s a high-quality product, to be sure (more Ruth’s Chris than McDonald’s), but there’s no regional differentiation; nothing unique, nothing genuine.

College football is the cultural kin of the mom and pop store that’s been run by the same family for a century. It’s the genuine article, the tangible, non-Disneyfied, remnant of real America. And like the mom and pop stores, we’d be better off as a country if we valued it more.

Stay tuned next week for “Passion,” the third and final installment of “Heresy.”

Heresy

The following is Part One of a three-part series by guest contributor Pat Downes.

I’m about to make an outrageous claim:

College football is superior to pro football.

I know my timing is a bit odd. I’m blasting this heretical opinion on the eve on pro football’s highest of holy days, seemingly dissing America’s most popular sport as it continues on its relentless ascent to unprecedented levels of popularity.

And I’m making this claim on the heels of a college football season that began with a rash of agent-driven rule-breaking, saw the deaths of players and student managers at Mississippi State and Notre Dame, and ended with the Heisman and national championship trophies being awarded to an essentially professional team financed by a comically corrupt cadre of crackers.

But even now, with the NFL at its zenith, and college football arguably at low ebb, I’m making this claim: college football is superior to pro football.

I’ve got nothing against pro football. I love the game, watch it regularly, and, like all other right-thinking, patriotic Americans, will be rooting heartily against the Packers on Sunday. And I’m not suffering from any delusions about the relative levels of play. The typical NFL athlete – at any position – is a rare physical and mental specimen in peak condition, and every game is an intricately choreographed wonder. College athletes, on the other hand, are teenagers. Athletically, their skills vary, and ideally (outside of the SEC) they’re part-timers. Moreover, some programs have substantial financial resources and an institutional commitment to the game, and some don’t. You’re simply not going to get the consistently refined product at the college level that you get in the NFL. (There’s also an element of corruption in the college game that threatens the whole enterprise – a subject for another day).

But college football has vast reserves of three things that the NFL lacks: history, variety, and passion.

I’ll deal with the first one today, and tackle the other two in separate posts next week and the week after.

History

College teams were selling out the country’s most important stadiums, inspiring Pulitzer-worthy literature and uniting millions of Americans when the professional game consisted of a handful of dubious characters bumbling their way around near-deserted cow pastures. (I exaggerate only a little).

In the first half of the 20th century, there were four American sports that mattered: baseball, horse racing, boxing and college football. Along with baseball, college football was the most popular. Along with baseball (e.g., Jackie Robinson) and boxing (e.g., Joe Louis), college football had the most significant impact on the culture at large.

The first football game ever played was a college game. It was played just a few short years after the Civil War, on College Field, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Rutgers beat Princeton, 6-4. The eastern teams, especially the Ivy League, dominated in the early decades. The game moved west as the 19th century progressed and blossomed in popularity.

A squad from the University of Michigan taught the game to a team from a Catholic school in South Bend, Indiana in 1887 and, in short order, the latter team became so powerful, regularly taking on and beating the WASP-dominated teams of the elite eastern schools, that it formed a rallying point for millions of urban ethnic immigrants (and their children) and became a meaningful part of the story of those immigrants’ assimilation into the American culture.

In every part of the country, even in places where the population was relatively sparse, college football programs developed a following beyond their alumni base and formed a focal point for the development of a regional identity. For many people in many parts of the country, for at least a century, college football was the game.

That history matters today because it stays with us. It forms a thread in the narrative of today’s games and connects our experience with our parents’ experience and their parents’ experience. Pro football may, in some ways, connect us with our fathers, but college football connects us with ancestors we never even knew.

When Alabama plays Auburn next year, the game won’t just be about the matchup of two elite modern-day squads, it’ll be about Auburn’s inaugural victory in 1893, and about Alabama coach Doc Pollard infuriating Auburn coach Mike Donahue with his elaborate formations and shifts back in ’06 and ’07. It’ll be about Joe Namath’s furious comeback in ’64. It’ll be about ’71’s titanic battle of undefeated programs, or ’72’s “Punt Bama Punt” classic. Those stories are as much a part of the game as Saban or Fairley or Newton or Chizik.

In the NFL there are a few games like that, but they’re largely of more recent vintage and they’re rarely incorporated into the narrative of this year’s game. The 1958 Championship Game between the Colts and the Giants is one of those games. They called it The Greatest Game Ever Played. Your father may even recall watching it on TV when he was a little boy. But when the Colts play the Giants these days, you probably won’t hear very much about it – the tabloids will be too focused on whether the Manning brothers exchanged text messages that week.

Terence Mann’s soliloquy from Field of Dreams is one of the great passages in film history: “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.” This sentiment applies with nearly equal force to college football. Does it apply to pro football? Eh, maybe... get back to me in a century or so and we’ll see.

Check back in next week for Part Two of Pat's "Heresy" series, "Variety."

College Football

Since I'm long overdue to add some value here and because, of all the SmackJabber admins, I should obviously be the one responsible for college football content, I bring you my college football story of the day.

It appears that the University of Miami may not have intended to fire Randy Shannon on the sole basis of his 7-5 record in a season where the Canes began the season in the Top 25. As brought to my attention by the blog, SPORTSbyBROOKS, Warren Sapp, former Miami Hurricane and Tampa Bay Buccaneer under Jon Gruden, indicated in a recent radio interview that Gruden called Miami AD Kirby Hocutt before Shannon's firing to say that he was interested in the head coaching job.

Miami has since hired former Temple head coach Al Golden to replace Shannon. Offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland is expected to serve as the interim coach for Miami's December 31 showdown with historic rival Notre Dame in the Hyundai Sun Bowl.

[SHAMELESS PLUG: Will Miami regain focus under its interim coach? Or will the distraction of an increasingly controversial coaching change leave the resurgent Irish with the edge in the Sun Bowl? Think you know who will come out on top?Register for membership at SmackJabber.com and login to compete for your share of $100 in prizes in Bowl Game Blackjack: A College Football Confidence Pool brought to you FREE, by your friends at SmackJabber.com.]