College Football Vs. Pro Football

College Football VS. Pro Football

With a growing number of people becoming interested in professional football along with college football, I thought I would explain some of the contrasts and comparisons' between the two divisions.

The first big contrast is the number of teams and number of games they play in a season. College football has 117 teams in the division 1-A, which is the top division. There are over a thousand teams in the 5 lower divisions. College teams play any where from 11 regular season games to 13. Some conferences have conference championship games which is another game and then the bowl games (Which is the college footballs postseason, which we'll talk about later) if you make one. So basically college teams can play any where from 11 to 15 total games in a year. All 32 pro football teams play 16 games in a regular season. If you make the playoffs you can play up to 4 more games if you keep winning games in the playoffs. Also pro football teams play a preseason which college doesn't. The preseason can consist of four to five more games. Pro football teams can play a minimum of 16 games and a maximum of 20 games. The 2 common parts of the season for the pros and college teams is that don't play everyone in one season and they get a bye week during the year.

College and pro teams use a basic set of the same plays and formations but they differ in little ways and what type of play is run. Most college teams use a run first technique and only pass when needed. They uses what is called an option play in college, pro football doesn't use the option at all. The pros use a 50/50 between run and pass. It all depends if you have a better running back or quarterback on your pro team. In pro football when you have 4th down you most likely will punt it away or kick a field goal, depending where you are. In college if a kicker is just out of range for a field goal and the punter is to close to punt it without going in the end zone, college teams will most likely go for it.

The speed of the games is totally different. In the pros just the best college players get to play. So the speed of the game is much faster in the pros than college. Consider just the top division in college football, which has 117 teams and multiply that by say 55-60 players per team. That is a watered down version of the speed of the pros, which is 32 teams