GROVE: College games excel in appeal

I thought I would be all footballed out on Sunday.

Youngstown State on Thursday night, Boardman’s upset of Cardinal Mooney on Friday and then I watched as much college football as I could Saturday afternoon before I came to work.

During my day off on Sunday, I still found myself watching Texas and Notre Dame.

And I probably would have watched Florida State and Ole Miss if I hadn’t been writing this.

But the thing is, I don’t even consider myself that big of a football fan. I love my high school alma mater, my college alma mater and I’ll typically watch the college games when there’s nothing else on during Saturday mornings besides celebrity poker and professional bowling.

But I know that NFL season is just around the corner and while many of you can’t wait, I wish we could just skip it all together.

Growing up, I lived for the NFL. I remember being huddled by my radio in my room on Sunday and Monday nights listening to the night games on the radio as low as the volume would go so my parents wouldn’t know I wasn’t asleep.

And then once I got a small portable black-and-white television I’d be huddled under my blankets late Monday nights with the antenna poking up under the covers just so I could watch “Monday Night Football.”

But that love has completely faded.

Last year, the only NFL game I watched all the way through was the Super Bowl and really I only watched it because you can’t be that guy, especially while working in the sports department of a newspaper, that didn’t watch the Super Bowl. Besides that game, I maybe watched one half of NFL throughout the year.

So why do I seem to prefer obviously inferior products to the NFL? It’s a question I ask myself all the time and I’ve come up with a couple of reasons.

The first is the style of play. There’s no way to win in the NFL if you don’t have incredibly strong quarterback play. There’s no way you can play anything but a pro-style offense. You could have one of the best defenses in the league and if you don’t have a superstar quarterback your team is likely to finish 8-8.

But then that brings me to my next reason — the playoff system, where an 8-8 team has a chance to be crowned champion just like the conference leader who went 14-2.

I know this is sacrilegious, but this is where soccer gets it right and football gets it wrong. Soccer has each team play twice, once home and once away, and whoever has the most points at the end of the season is the champion because they proved themselves to be the best team.

In football, the team that goes 14-2, and proved over the course of the entire season to be the best team, could have one bad day with a few mistimed fumbles and lose to that 8-8 team that somehow stumbled into the playoffs.

And then we get to crush that 14-2 team with buzzwords like “They didn’t have enough heart!” or “The other team clearly wanted it more!” as if anyone who makes it to the NFL can show up on a game day and not care about the outcome.

But then again, not having playoffs wouldn’t be good television where they take a commercial after an extra point and then again after the kickoff to sell you more light beer, another credit card and that new cell phone that you need to have before the next generation passes you by.

The commercials may happen during college games too, but at least you can get interesting match-ups like Georgia Tech’s offense or upsets like Northern Iowa beating Iowa State. And you’re not going to find a 6-6 team competing for a national championship.

Charles Grove is a sportswriter for The Vindicator. Write him at cgrove@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter @cgrovevindy.