I know everyone is saying the NFL is awful right now, but - man - the NFL is awful right now. You basically have the Patriots (who really aren't that great themselves) and a bunch of mediocre to garbage teams. That Arizona-Seattle game last night was an abortion. The fact that it ended in a 6-6 tie after both kickers missed chip shot FGs was the most appropriate end to a game you'll ever see. Pure solid butt.
I'm the GYERO resident NFL-ball and I agree with this. I went to the Bengals game yesterday and even that was awful. Kind of a ho-hum game outside of a few plays, a lot of that being due to Cleveland being so awful. And the other games on TV were pretty awful too.
College has two natural advantages that the NFL will never have, and it has nothing to do with "paegentry" or "tradition"- neither of which translate to the actual game broadcast:
1. Full slate of games- the only upside of college games taking 4 1/2 hours is once you get to the 4th quarter of the noon games, the rest of the day is finding close 4th quarters/starting bigger matchups. If the game you're watching now sucks, chances are there's a crazy ending happening on another channel, or a better matchup starting up. Just like the opening weekend of the NCAAT. Meanwhile the NFL is more like the Elite 8 games- you're limited to 1 game, maybe 2, but that's it (unless you have the RZ Channel but even then you'll only have 4-5 to pick from in the afternoon.)
2. Future Enterprise clerks playing in the secondary. This is the biggest source of entertainment and shootouts, imo. Outside maybe Alabama recently (outside their kickers), every college team has guys out there who you can count on to have some tremendous touch ups- blown coverage, missed tackle, DICKFINGERS, etc. that leads to exciting plays/turnovers, etc. A lot of these guys play on special teams- leading to fun punt/kick returns and/or blocks- or are the 5/6 DBs in nickel and dime packages that become the standard defenses in some games. The NFL, outside of maybe Cleveland, is usually filled with pretty good players at every position so while the quality of down to down play may be better, it's not as entertaining as watching a future State Farm regional rep trying to cover Peter Warrick.
The NFL does have better/closer gambol and FFB though.