And from a personal standpoint, if you think the NFL is boring than maybe you haven't given it enough of a chance. The football is much, much better than in college. The skill levels between the teams are much closer, so you have a higher percentage of good games. The race for playoff spots means that each one of those games is significant. And then of course there are the NFL playoffs, which are just absolutely great.
I acknowledge its advantages, but my problems with the NFL are similar to Beej's and Ish's.
The biggest problem with CFB is the lack of overall competitiveness. It's true there are a lot more blowouts, but there are also a lot more big upsets. Almost no NFL upset is a big upset by the CFB definition. This makes CFB both more boring and more exciting at the same time.
As mentioned, the NFL personnel is much more ideal and equal for every team, which means that the systems vary less. CFB coaches have more trade-offs based on the personnel they can get. Also they do not have the practice time available so there are trade-offs in what they can emphasize. With an engineering mindset I like watching the eternal chess-match of trade-offs in CFB.
CFB has more pageantry and more history which I like and I think most CFB fans like. Along these lines, I think you are mistaken about fan affluence.
One major reason that CFB makes less money than the NFL is that it appeals least to "the masses". CFB is more popular among college graduates as a whole than among Southerners as a whole, accoridng to
this sports marketing blog:
• College football is particularly popular among those with a college degree (22%) and Southerners (20%).
• Pro football is most popular among those with household incomes of $50,000 to under $75,000 (39%).
Elsewhere he notes that while CFB lags NFL football, it is still the
third most popular sport. By this measure the NFL would be 2.5 x as popular as CFB, so the popularity margin is only half of the income margin. This is good ammo for the CFB playoff movement.
However it's also good ammo for the non-playoff movement. The very reason the NFL makes twice as much money, for its popularity, is that it is completely and wholly in business to make money.
NCAA football is not just money. It's largely about money, but not JUST about money. This is its greatest strength.
People can scoff at this all they want to, but the people who are in charge of NCAA football at the very top are academics and they are not motivated by money to the same degree that the NFL is. There are many forces in the NCAA that are not completely willing to give up non-profit ideals just to make more money from its popularity.
The NFL is much less old fashioned, less controlled by forces of tradition, and much more corporate than CFB is. It also has far more centralized control.
In Daniel Boorstin's terms, an NFL game is more of a planned corporate marketing pseudo-event than a CFB game is.
I personally prefer my activities more real and less corporate -- so I prefer CFB.
