Where does it get its demand from? College football is generally more popular than the professional game in the Southern states of America; historically, teams such as the Dallas Cowboys and the Atlanta Falcons arrived in the 1960s. Collegiate fandom unites the community, too. Many in the area may have attended the college they follow, which plays into the aforementioned sense of belonging, whilst for others it is likely that they simply support their local team. Remember, the NFL only has 32 franchises, and America is disturbingly massive - the sheer size of the country leaves longing fans without a local professional team. Through research, I found that there are 85 colleges in top-tier football divisions - and countless more in the lower tiers - which means that there is a far greater chance that a given fan will have a college in close proximity to follow rather than the NFL. Another pivotal aspect is the fact that the NFL is a business-driven league that traditionally does not prioritise the fanbase, with franchises packing up and switching cities when it’s economically beneficial to do so - but I’ll get into that another time.

Atmosphere

You could make a solid argument that college rivalry games are far more intense and important than their professional equivalent. Even games when a historically lower-ranked team plays a higher-ranked team, there is pure pandemonium that is largely incomparable to the professional game. In the NFL, your rivals will be the three teams in your division whom you play twice a year. When the Vikings beat the Packers, do you see floods of fans take to the field? Such scenes genuinely bear no resemblance to those in Minnesota (the same city as the Vikings, let alone state) when the Gophers defeated Penn State this past season - a first win for the college over a top-five ranked opposition in 20 years. There are no specific trophies between professional teams like there are in college, where silverware is used to symbolise and embody the historic bond between two schools. In the UK, there is the great rivalry between Oxford and Cambridge that stands as the best comparison, with the boat race being the crowning jewel in this competitive relationship. There is a history, almost a legend between these two schools that is difficult to replicate professionally. As for the ranking disparity that results in such excitement, the lack of relegation in professional American sports discards this potential. Each of the 32 teams will face each other in a four-year cycle at worst, so the anticipation for a milestone victory is unlikely to come to fruition. Coming back to the UK again, the FA Cup is the best example of this triumphant feeling. It is the football (soccer) tournament whereby every registered team, professional or not, takes part across the country. Cinderella stories lie at the heart of the tournament, and that’s what makes it different to any such competition in the world. In the 2019-20 tournament (which is still running, of course), 735 teams entered. This disparity in quality makes the potential for an upset a tantalising prospect - a feeling rarely found in the NFL, but can be discovered in college.