College > Pro: The Stakes

I am often asked, particularly in the bleak days after the Mythical National Championship game when college ball gears up for Signing Day while pro players hit the field in those interminable playoff games, what sort of heretic am I that eschews the ‘superior’ form of the game? After all, that’s where all the talent is. It’s akin to saying, “No thanks, I don’t think I’ll go see Kristen Chenoweth on Broadway tonight. I’ve got tickets for Podunk College’s mounting of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.”

Not so fast, my friend, as Lee Corso says. In this upcoming series, College Ball > Pro Ball, I explain why pro ball will never near the inner sanctum of my heart in which college ball resides.

But first, I must lay some philosophical groundwork. We must each ask ourselves, “Why do I watch football?” For some, it’s a pastime, a light diversion to pass away time on evenings or weekends. These are the same people who believe movies are “just entertainment,” and for them the act of viewing is their final destination. For this group of people, college or pro ball is completely fungible and none of my arguments will be in the least persuasive.

Others, such as myself, load upon football a host of socio-existential symbolism. It’s a way of not only making sense of the world, but interacting with it. For example, there is a definite truth in the saying, “Yankees invented football, but Southerners perfected it.” This bastardized form of rugby began emerging at just the time the South began emerging from the crippling sanctions of Reconstruction. The entire region suffered from the crippling triple blow of economic devastation, under-education, and social upheaval. Southerners still loved their homeland and needed something in which they could take pride and would allow them to succeed on a national stage.

The profiteers didn’t bring football with them in their detested carpetbags, but it trickled down from New England and the Midwest nonetheless. Southerners lunged at this opportunity like a quarterback sneak at the goal line. When schools like Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia began beating the likes of Southern Cal and Michigan at their own game, literally, it became a rallying point. Perhaps these backwoods, backwards hicks had every disadvantage, but by God they were good at something.

That exultation that Southerners were finally being given positive publicity isn’t something you’ll find between any hashmarks or on the X’s and O’s chalkboard. These implications require more attention than an I’ll-watch-the-game-if-I’m-not-busy-attitude and imbue meaning into every aspect of the game. Because of that, the “game” is not four quarters of fifteen minutes apiece; it’s a constant, all day, every day vigil.

In the coming days I’ll be much more specific in my praise for the traditions of college ball. But the extrapolations thereof must always remain in mind. If Tennessee loses, it’s more than, “Oh, we lost and looked horrible, that sucks.” It’s, “We lost and looked terrible and have shamed our state and (especially if playing out of conference) our region. Now we’re going to have to work that much harder to be taken seriously in every aspect of national life.”

Conversely, the Western and Northern teams need football in an attempt to keep the South in its place. Outside of historical rivalries, those teams like nothing better to beat the SEC. It’s a twisted sense of pride in them as well.

So why do is college ball better than pro? First off, the stakes are much, much higher.