Fans vote their preference every autumn weekend, when 180,000 fill the stadiums in Ann Arbor and East Lansing, and 60,000 file into the Silverdome. College football is the real thing.
Pro football is the imitator.
College football was invented in 1869 by well-intentioned students from Princeton and Rutgers. Pro football was born as a business in the 1920s, grew as a business, forever will be a business. College football permeates more pockets of this country, in towns big and small. It's flannel and corduroy and tradition. Pro football is polyester and plastic and the salary cap.