NFL vs. NCAA

NFL is different, not better


OK, I'm Bob Stoops, and I've got a decision to make. I make $2.5 million a year coaching the Oklahoma Sooners, and life is very good. Norman is a nice college town; it's not Malibu, but it's not Starkville, either. I'm so popular in the state of Oklahoma, I could run for governor and get 80 percent of the votes without campaigning.


Now, here comes New York Giants (news) owner Wellington Mara. A nice man with good intentions, he desperately needs a coach and is willing to pay just about anything to pry me from my personal paradise. I'm going to give it all up -- job security, three months' down time, a machine that recruits itself -- to stroke my ego and prove I can coach in the NFL.


Yep, I'm going to trade it all for 18-hour workdays, pampered, pompous athletes playing for the next payday, no vacation, no down time, and, by the way, no margin for error. And they'll throw me a couple extra million a year for my troubles.


Are you nuts?


"It's not just a different game," Stoops says. "It's a different world."

Continued