Football Like It Oughta Be

DARN RIGHT IT WAS A TURBULENT OFF-SEASON for college football. So many changes. Let the Pac-10 henceforth be known as the Pac-12, the Big 12 as the Big 12 Lite, and the Big Ten as Delany's Dozen. And the FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign is still illuminated. Superconferences are on the horizon. ¶ While these changes—actual or proposed—may leave some partisans disoriented, disappointed and disgusted, none of those alterations can undermine the premise of this essay: that college football reigns supreme over the NFL. With its ancient rivalries and revered traditions, its oversized passions and colorful characters, the college game is this country's most compelling sport, warts and all. ¶ Of course, even transcendent beauties have flaws. (You'd be surprised how many of the SI swimsuit models smoke.) And in this case the flaw is avarice. Conference commissioners continue to hyperventilate over those superconferences and the stratospheric sums they'll be able to wring from TV networks by expanding their respective league's footprints from, say, 12 to 14 or 16 teams. Who knows, maybe more. You can bet that Larry Scott, the Pac-10's ambitious first-year commish—who calls his charge nothing less than "reinventing" his conference—isn't about to content himself with poaching just Colorado and Utah.

Such dramatic expansion will result in contraction elsewhere. Just ask the Big 12, whose long June weekend in intensive care ended only when Texas decided not to bail. At least for now.

Superconferences will lead to the extinction of some treasured rivalries, just as they will accelerate the polarization between the college football's haves and have-nots. The rich will get richer. (And the TCU Horned Frogs will still end up kicking their backsides more often than not.) And you know what? Bring it on. Change is inevitable; it's healthy; it's good, unless you're the Big East and Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany is eyeballing you the way a boa looks at a fluffy white bunny.

However the landscape of this sport changes during the next several seasons, college football will still be more beautiful, more interesting and more fun than the dome-sheltered, corporate, conformist game that's played in the NFL. College football will look different but remain strong.

Whether the SEC is made up of 12 teams (as currently constituted) or four four-team divisions, undergrads at Ole Miss will continue to dress up for tailgates in the Grove, those stately oaks casting blessed shade outside Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. However supersized the Pac-10 becomes, the USC Trojans won't stop "tapping in" at Goux's Gate before every practice. The Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band, which once commemorated the flight of O.J. Simpson by driving a white Bronco around the Stanford Stadium track, will continue to amuse, entertain and offend. Regardless of the state of the ACC, the Clemson Tigers will refuse to descend into Death Valley until they've rubbed Howard's Rock. Even if (or when) the Big 12 truly implodes, forcing Missouri into the arms of, say, the Mountain West, Mizzou students will still celebrate huge wins by lugging the goalposts the 17 blocks from Faurot Field to Harpo's, the renowned public house whose bartenders will then dispense small hacksaws to patrons so everyone can go out and get a piece. And isn't that what college is all about?

DON'T GET ME WRONG, IF THERE'S AN NFL GAME ON, I have trouble walking past the TV. I've been on the college football beat for 15 of the last 20 years but covered the NFL for five years in the mid-'90s. Monday Night Football is a ritual in my house, even though Tony Kornheiser was an acquired taste I never acquired and the braying of Hank Williams Jr. makes me wince. Literally. I like NFL football as much as the next guy. I'm just saying that, for a bunch of reasons, I prefer the college game. I mean much prefer. I mean, it's not even close.

O.K., let's give credit where it's due. The NFL has bigger, better, faster athletes than we see in the college game. Hmm. What else. For a sportswriter, it offers the advantage of having more direct flights. Other than that, to my way of thinking, it's no contest. Better athletes do not equal better football. There is less risk-taking in the NFL, less variety, more cautious coaches spending more time scrutinizing percentages and playing not to lose. The high school football coach and prolific author John T. Reed has identified what he calls the "principles of contrarianism," and they are much more in evidence on Saturdays than Sundays. "I'm all for giving each team an equal chance to win with regard to spending limits and the draft," Reed has written. "However, when parity takes the form of uniformity of offensive tactics and strategy, it is not entertaining at all. It is boring."

College football is many things, but homogenous isn't one of them. With its smorgasbord of offensive attacks—from the no-huddle, hurry-up offenses common in the Big 12 to the triple options favored by the service academies to the pistol offenses recently unholstered at UCLA and Arkansas—the college game offers much more variety than the conformist, cookie-cutter NFL.

Around the same time that Tim Tebow started flummoxing SEC defenses by passing over the linebackers on one play and knocking the snot out of them the next, the then Florida Gator started hearing the questions, the doubts: Yeah, he's a winner and a born leader, but can he play QB in the League?

We're about to find out. Yes, Tebow has had to tweak his release point, and no, he's not the prototypical NFL quarterback. (Tebow is actually more multidimensional than that: a superior athlete.) Maybe Tebow will pan out with the Denver Broncos and open-minded head coach Josh McDaniels. Maybe he won't. But if Tebow never thrives as a pro, well, the way I see it, if one of the most exciting players in the history of college football can't find a home in the NFL, that's more an indictment of the League than it is of the player.