Sports Illustrated - NFL v CFB debate

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I realize many fans watch football mainly for that glitzy presentation. They love the pageantry of football. The tradition. The sense of community. Most people say that in this regard, college beats pro. To those people, I say: you’re right. In fact, it’s really not that close. But there are those of us who like football’s pageantry but love its strategy. We see the game as a chess match, only where everyone’s pieces are not the same, those pieces are not confined to individual squares, they move not one at a time but all at once, and that movement usually doesn’t stop until someone scores or gets hit.

From a strategic entertainment standpoint, pro football annihilates college football. 

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it occurred to me that I don’t want strategic entertainment. I want entertaining entertainment. That’s what college football provides. To use Andy’s own words, it is “loose and sloppy.” To put it in terms Andy and his analytical ilk will appreciate, those are features—not bugs. (Benoit also compared college football to “a fourth-grader’s handwritten notebook.” Great line, but there sure seem to be a lot of NFL coaches leafing through said notebook to borrow schematic innovations.)

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