Five Reasons Why College Football is Better than the NFL

Most people have a love/hate relationship with football.  They either love it – and can’t get enough of it – or they hate it.  Like most sports, I like football, though I don’t enjoy it as much as some other sports, like baseball or hockey.  But, over the past few years, I’ve come to the conclusion that college football is better than pro football.  Here are 5 reasons why I believe that college football is better than the NFL:

Tradition: The Baylor Line.  The Ohio State band dotting the i on the script “Ohio”. The 12^th man and kissing your date after a score at Texas A&M.  Rolling the corner and the war eagle at Auburn.  Howard’s Rock and running down the hill at Clemson.  Playing “between the hedges” at Georgia.  The Sooner Schooner at Oklahoma and Chief Osceola at Florida State.  The list goes on and on.  Virtually every major college football program has unique traditions surrounding its team and their fans, traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation for decades.  Sports can be a wonderful, unifying thing that brings people from disparate backgrounds (politically, socially, economically) together to cheer for a common cause and these various traditions play a huge role in that.

Atmosphere: This is closely related to the aforementioned item, but I think it deserves its own category.  Much like the way that the atmosphere at a college basketball game is much better than the atmosphere at an NBA game, the atmosphere at a college football game far surpasses the atmosphere at an NFL game.  There are lots of reasons for that.  The marching band playing a fight song to which tens of thousands of people sing and clap along.  The thousands of students – many of whom are near the field – standing the whole game, some of their faces or bodies painted and others dressed in all other manner of crazy outfits or school colors.  In pro sports, those seats closest to the field or inhabited by the wealthy businessman who got a free ticket through work and is more concerned with talking shop than watching the game.  But, at a college football game, when you have the students right next to the field, the atmosphere can be absolutely electric.  I recall going to the Baylor-Texas A&M game at Kyle Field in College Station when I was a freshman.  At kickoff, I had 72,000 people (it’d be 100,000+ people today) chant that they wanted to beat the hell of me.  The whole stadium seemed to sway when they sang the Aggie War Hymn.  I don’t like the Aggies, but the atmosphere in that stadium was amazing.  In addition to Texas A&M, I’ve been to games at some other major college football stadiums (including Texas, Oklahoma and Notre Dame) and the atmosphere and pageantry at those games blows the atmosphere at NFL games out of the water.  When there is a big upset in a college football game, the students rush the field and celebrate with the players and by perhaps tearing down the goalposts.  You don’t see that sort of thing in the NFL.

Offense:  College football is home to the spread offense, the wildcat and the triple option.  Offensive experimentation is welcome.  Trick plays are fairly common.  The NFL is home to three yards and a cloud of dust.  This season, only 2 out of 32 NFL teams are averaging more than 30 points per game, while 10 teams average less than 20 points per game.  In college football (FBS) on the other hand, there are 67 teams averaging at least 30 points per game.  College football is home to wild, back and forth games with scores like 61-58, 50-47 and 52-46.  The NFL is home to plodding, boring games with scores like 16-15, 16-13, 19-12, 9-3 and 17-14.  (Those are all actual scores from week 2 of the 2016 NFL season, by the way.)  I appreciate a great goal line stand as much as the next guy, but when the punter is one of the more prominent players on your team, that’s not a good thing.

Overtime:  College football and the NFL approach OT in very different ways.  In college football, each team gets the ball at the opposing team’s 25 yard line and attempts to score a touchdown or a field goal.  If the game is tied after that OT, it goes to another OT.  Beginning in the 3^rd OT, teams who score a TD must then go for a 2-point conversion.  In the NFL, the winner of the coin toss gets the ball.  If they score a touchdown, the game is over and the other team never even gets the ball.  If they kick a field goal, the other team gets the ball.  If they score a TD, the game is over.  If they score a field goal, the game continues.  If the score remains tied after 15 minutes, the game ends in a tie.  It’s kind of convoluted.  However, there exists a very real possibility that the team that loses the coin toss never even gets a chance to score, which seems fundamentally unfair – to put that much emphasis on something as random as a coin toss.  College football’s OT rules may result in inflated statistics and crazy scores, but there’s no denying that it is action-packed and suspenseful.  The NFL’s OT rules, on the other hand, blow.

It's Not All Business: Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of money wrapped up in college football – obscene amounts when you consider that it’s an amateur sport for which the players do not receive direct compensation…well, allegedly.  In most states, the highest paid public employee is the football coach, which is crazy.  But it’s not ALL about business.  For instance, most college football stadiums are named after an alumnus or a former coach or a donor, rather than being raffled off and named after the highest corporate bidder.  This gives us stately stadium names like Sanford Stadium, Faurot Field, Kyle Field, and Neyland Stadium, rather than clunky corporate names like M&T Bank Stadium (nee PSINet Stadum), Hard Rock Stadium (nee Sun Life Stadium, Landshark Stadium and ProPlayer Stadium), NRG Stadium and Sports Authority Field at Mile High that you see in the NFL.  In the NFL, the league dictates what coaches can wear on the sidelines and what kind of socks the players can wear on the field.  Lately, the NFL has even moved to forbid teams from streaming video and highlights of games on their websites and social media, all in an effort to protect their almighty dollar.  Worst of all, NFL teams turn their backs on supportive fan bases and move to another city just because they think they can make more money somewhere else.  It happened to Baltimore.  It happened to Cleveland.  It’s happened to St. Louis twice.  It’s happened to Los Angeles twice and it’s soon going to happen to Oakland for a second time.  The NFL has no loyalty to the cities it inhabits or the rabid fan bases that support their product.  Their only loyalty is to their pocketbook.  While college football certainly has its flaws, we don’t have to worry about the Buckeyes packing up and moving to LA or the Nittany Lions moving to Portland.  We can rest assured that, through good years and bad, we can head to the great college towns across America to watch football on a glorious autumn Saturday without having to worry about whether or not we’ll have a team to support next year.

The NFL is supposed to represent the top echelon of football in the United States, but for the reasons listed above, I’ll take college football over the NFL any day.

Thanks for reading!

The Adventures of Captain Underbite

Back in the summer of 2014, we adopted a quasi-rescue dog.  He was a pure bred shih tzu who was originally named Teddy but who we renamed Yadi.  He was about 6 months old when he joined our family, but he had a long, strange trip before he found his way to us.

He was born in North Carolina in January 2014.  He was purchased by a young man as a gift to his girlfriend.  A short while later, they broke up and the girl decided that she couldn’t afford to keep the dog.  Her aunt and uncle, who lived in St. Louis, became aware of the situation.  They drove to North Carolina, got the dog and brought him back to their home in St. Louis.  However, they were in the process of getting ready to move to a retirement community in Florida.  They already had another dog and didn’t want to have two dogs in their new home.  Reluctantly, the lady was planning to take the dog to the Humane Society, even though she was worried about finding a good home for him.  As she was in the parking lot outside of the Humane Society, she ran into a mom and her two kids.  She asked them if they wanted a free dog.  The mom called her husband to see if he would agree to it but he said no.  However, the mom told the lady to not give him up yet.  She said that she’d find someone who could adopt him.  She posted pictures of the puppy on Facebook asking if anyone wanted to adopt this sweet little dog.

My wife saw the picture on Facebook and showed me in passing.  I asked her if she replied and said we were interested.  She said “What?  We can get another dog?”  I replied, “Sure.”  At the time, our dog, Allie (whom I’ve written about before) was 12 years old and starting to have some health issues.  We thought it might be good to have a younger dog, too.  My wife replied, got the lady’s contact information, and made arrangements to meet Teddy the following day.  She showed the kids pictures of him and, of course, they were excited.  Even before meeting him, they’d already decided to name him Yadi, after the Cardinals’ catcher (and future Baseball Hall of Famer), Yadier Molina.  So, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that we were going to adopt him before we even met him.  Fortunately, "Teddy" and "Yadi" sound relatively similar, so it wasn't too big of an adjustment for the little guy.

We went over to the lady’s house the following morning and, within seconds of seeing him, it was a done deal.  He was cute and friendly and we loved him.  The lady, in turn, thought we’d be a great fit for him, since we already had an older dog and the kids were so good with him.  We brought him home that day and he immediately made himself at home.  We bought him a new, St. Louis Cardinals collar (of course).  I quickly came up with a myriad of nicknames for him-  Buddy Buds, Mr. Mister and, especially, Captain Underbite.  The latter owing to his pronounced underbite and also because of those Captain Underpants books that my kids love to read.  Whenever he looks up at us with his underbite showing, we say "Captain Underbite is back!"

Yadi is spunky and a lot of fun. He absolutely loves to go for walks, to the point that he basically refuses to go poop unless you take him for a walk.  Every morning, I have to take him for a walk before I go to work.  As soon as he sees me putting on my shoes, he heads for the front door, ready to go on our daily morning walk.  He loves to watch TV and sometimes barks at the things he doesn’t like on the screen, including a goofy local ad that features a guy wearing a Blackhawks jersey.  He barks at that guy every time!  He loves to play tug-of-war and fetch and loves being outside.  He also loves ice cream, pudding, yogurt and especially Skinny Pop!  He could be upstairs but if he hears you open a bag of Skinny Pop, he’ll come flying into the kitchen to have a few pieces.

More than anything, though, Yadi LOVES my wife.  He practically worships her.  He follows her around everywhere, will shower her with kisses when she’s sitting on the couch and watching TV.  And he ALWAYS sleeps next to her at night.  He NEVER sleeps next to me.  Even when my wife was out of town for a few nights a few weeks ago, he spent most of those nights sleeping in the spot where you’d normally find her pillow.

Having Yadi around made the loss of our older dog, Allie, a little easier when she passed earlier this year. (See my earlier blog post entitled “Farewell to the Short Stack Girl” from February to learn more about Allie.)  In Allie’s final moments, when she was shaking due to the pain and fear, Yadi would curl up next to her, trying to comfort her.

Having Yadi in our lives would automatically make them better, regardless of how we got him.  But when you consider how it came to be – and the travels and changes the poor little guy went through over the first several months of his life – it makes it all just a little bit sweeter.

We are fortunate to have him as a dog and he’s lucky to have us as a family.

Thanks for reading!

 

An Open Letter to the GOP

Dear GOP:

I think it's time that we have a frank conversation about you because you seem to have lost your way.  You're confused and conflicted and, quite frankly, a little hypocritical.  You claim to be the party of limited government, but you started a war that you couldn't pay for.  You took a budget surplus in 2001 and turned it into a giant budget deficit by 2008.  You lambast Democrats for being "tax and spend liberals" while yourselves spending billions of dollars on wars and military build-ups...but without coming up with the funds to pay for it.  You talk about small government and staying out of the lives of individual citizens on one hand while, on the other hand,  calling special sessions of Congress to get involved in the affairs of one family (remember the whole Terri Schiavo thing?) and continually trying to tell people who they can and can't marry.  You bash Democrats for spending money on "entitlements" at home while yourselves voting to spend billions on infrastructure in other countries.  You blame Obama for the rise of ISIS in Iraq while conveniently forgetting that you all were the ones who attacked Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein (a man who was no threat at all to the U.S.), which created the void into which ISIS stepped in the first place.  You claim to be the party of social conservatism and moral values, while embracing a thrice divorced pill popper as your biggest media star.

Oh, you've gotten a few things right.  The Affordable Care Act is an abject failure that, while granting insurance to millions of Americans who didn't have insurance before, is causing many more millions of Americans to have to pay much more for much worse insurance than we had 5 or 6 years ago.  But, in general, you have swung and missed much more than you've gotten base hits.

Your latest, and arguably your most egregious, error is hitching your wagon to Donald Trump for president.  You started out with 16 or 17 candidates, almost all of whom would have been a better option than the guy with whom you wound up.  Seriously, you don't think that somebody like Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush or John Kasich wouldn't be clobbering Hillary Clinton in the polls right now?  You basically nominated one of the only candidates in your party who probably can't beat Clinton. 

Think about it: you claim to be the party of the high morals, but you nominated a vulgar, twice divorced, misogynistic bigot for president.  You claim to be the party of limited government, but you nominated an egotistical tyrant who believes that he alone is the solution to all of our problems.  Worst of all is watching you twist yourselves inside out trying to embrace a guy that most of you hated a year ago.  Watching you try to gloss over or restate Trump's many incendiary comments to somehow make them less offensive.  Watching you try to fall in line behind a guy that most of you considered an lightweight reality show idiot just a few years ago.  Why?  Because you hate Hillary Clinton so much.  Most of your arguments in favor of your candidate are actually more about why you hate Hillary.  Is Trump a loose cannon?  Sure, but he's still better than Hillary! 

Instead of sticking to your principles and either nominating a fiscal conservative or at least not falling in line behind someone who represents almost nothing you stand for, your hatred for Hillary runs so deep that you basically have forsaken all of your principles to support what you perceive to be the lesser of two evils.  And now, it's blowing up in your face as result of yet more disparaging comments from Trump.  You're all freaking out and all I can say is that you're getting what you deserve.

Why should you care what I think?  What difference does it make if some dopey, small time blogger in the Midwest thinks you're all a bunch of idiots?  Because I'm an independent.  I'm someone who sometimes votes for Republicans and sometimes votes for Democrats.  I'm the educated, gainfully employed, upper middle class, libertarian voter that you should covet and that you should never have to worry about.  But I'm calling you out for your hypocrisy, your inconsistency, your duplicity.  You should have been able to count on me to vote for your ticket, but you've fumbled that vote away.

So, if the sky appears to be falling this autumn......if your party fractures into a thousand pieces following the election....if you wonder where it all went wrong, just remember that you brought this on yourself.  It's not the "liberal media" or the "minorities" or the "entitlement babies" who caused your downfall.  It's your own damn fault.  If you're looking for someone to blame for your failings, you need to look no further than the nearest mirror.  You're getting just what you deserve.

In the interim, I'll be casting my vote for candidates who are consistent and genuine and who actually stand up for what they believe in.  Let me know when you think you've learned your lesson and maybe we can talk again.

Thanks for reading.