Critics of big-time intercollegiate athletics often refer to college football — derisively — as merely a minor league for the pros. That is no longer accurate, if it ever was.

College football is no more of a minor league than, say, the universities’ schools of journalism, engineering or music are. We can argue at another time whether football should occupy the same space on campus as those disciplines, but for now, it does. The critical point is that a coach is less concerned with preparing athletes for the next level than he is with molding them to fit a system that helps him win games, keep his job and, eventually, move on to a position with a more prestigious program.

Coaches are taking care of their own needs first and leaving it to N.F.L. teams to retrain the players; colleges’ role as a feeder system has become almost incidental.

“We’ve got to train you to win games in our system,” said Tom Herman, Ohio State’s offensive coordinator.

Herman, who will take over as the University of Houston’s head coach for next season, added: “Our system totally prepares you to play in the N.F.L., but you have to face it: Either you’re good enough, or you’re not good enough. The N.F.L. takes the best players in the world and pays them a whole lot of money to do a job, and none of that is predicated on what kind of system you ran in college.”

The widening gap in philosophies, however, means that players’ adjustment to the N.F.L. could take longer — especially for spread-offense quarterbacks and the offensive linemen who, in many systems, almost exclusively pass block.

Meyer, Ohio State’s coach, developed quarterback Alex Smith while they were at Utah, and Smith, the top pick in the 2005 N.F.L. draft, has become a serviceable professional. But at Florida, Meyer also coached Tim Tebow and Chris Leak, quarterbacks who were great for Meyer’s system but not much else.