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Add to FavoritesWhile many people don't want to believe it the truth of the matter is that college football is overrated. There are those that will put college football on a pedestal and hold the game high above themselves and the realm of any other sport. The argument being that this is football in it's most pure form. The way that the game should be played and how everyone should enjoy the game. However the truth is much further from that notion than one would expect.
Easily the biggest argument for why college football is overrated is the scheduling factor. While there are good games every week, that's only a very small portion of games. A handful, maybe six or seven games a week are even close to being considered marquee. The rest are four plus touchdown blowouts that are over by the end of the second quarter. The gaps in talent over the years between upper level teams and lower level teams has narrowed, but it's not enough to make for interesting games all the time. In the NFL there are blowouts but on a whole games are more competitive over the course of the week. It's not near as easy to pick who will win between Pittsburgh and Indianapolis as it is between USC and Oregon State.
Another glaring factor for college football being overrated is the poor system they have implemented for deciding a national championship. Merely mention BCS and before you can even get to the S part you will have college football fans shuttering at the sound of it. A terrible way to decide who the national champion will be only adds to the disappointment of certain games and makes the game all that more overrated. If the presidents of the schools finally understand just how profitable a playoff system can be, they would be pleasantly surprised just how happy fans of the game would be and how many new fans they would attract that were turned off by the BCS. This is just a reality that is too far away from happening unfortunately.
College football does have it's merits, there is absolutely no doubt about that and the game is good to watch from time to time, depending on the teams. However there is no doubt that it's overrated and inferior to the NFL in so many so many ways. In time perhaps college football will mend its ways, but there is no reason for anyone to hold their breath on this.
Learn more about this author, Cain Carpenter.
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No
Over-rated! is a chant people toss out at many sporting events. It can apply to teams, coaches, and players, but what about an entire sport? Is there such a thing as an overrated sport? Ratings, by today's definition, are typically thought of as the popular perception of someone's (or some team's) ability. There are differences of opinion as to how or why someone or something is rated highly, and, in most sports, eventually the opportunity is there to decide things on the field through direct competition. Some basketball fans thought Kobe Bryant was overrated recently, but when he led the Lakers to the NBA championship (for the first time without Shaq), he was vindicated. Teams are often rated by statistical formulas or human polls, and both the numbers and the people can be proven wrong by big upsets. Nobody thought the Tampa Bay Rays would be able to even make the playoffs last year, let alone upset the Red Sox on the way to the World Series.
How would the concept of being overrated apply to a whole sport? To start with, people often rate a sport highly because it has a large audience. Attendance at games and viewership are ways to measure a sports popularity, which is often (but not always) an indicator of how good it is. We even use the term ratings to describe the number of TV viewers a show gets. In the case of the audience, college football cannot be overrated, because it has a high viewership (both live and on TV). An overrated sport would be one where people believe a lot of people watch it, but in reality very few people actually do. This is not the case with college football.
People also rate a sport highly because of its excitement. This is hard to measure, but likely consists of things like incredible plays, interesting players, and closely fought games. While it is true that many college football games are not close, the volume of games insures that some games will be close on any given Saturday, and that viewers who want to watch them will be able to do so. College football also has many incredible plays for the same reasonwith so many plays being made, the chances are good that some of them will be incredible. Also, college football has many interesting players, since once again there are so many players that the odds are that several of them will be interesting. In its excitement, college football is not overrated.
People also rate a sport highly because of its media coverage. Teams and athletes get talked about a lot in the mainstream media because they are interesting to viewers, readers, and listeners. While there are, on occasion, media stories that seem concocted, media outlets are businesses, and stories will never last long if people aren't interested. College football gets a lot of media coverage because there are viewers, readers, and listeners who want that coverage. If the media were propping up college football and telling people that it was good, rather than having people actually believe that it is good, college football would be overrated. That is clearly not the case.
By almost any measure, college football is a terrific, popular sport with a rich history and a valued place among the highly-rated major sports in America.
Learn more about this author, Mark Schwartz.
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