The Minor Leagues of American Football

A game played between teams representing The Ohio State University and Notre Dame University on the evening of January 20th in Atlanta, Georgia resulted in a victory for the team from Ohio and defeat for the one from Indiana. The winner is considered the champion of NCAA football at the highest level.

While college football is immensely popular with the students, alumni, and residents of the state and surrounding area, the fact is that it's very much inferior to the professional model of the NFL. This is quite obvious since the NFL ranks are made up of the best players from college rosters. Even so, NFL games are filled with misplays and incidents that indicate that the players are either ignorant of the rules or ignore them, which results in many "penalties".

College football is thus the "minor league" of the NFL.

Major league baseball, on the other hand, generally prefers not to draw its players from the college ranks. Very few baseball players advance to the big league clubs without some experience, often a lot, in the minor leagues, teams that give young players an opportunity to learn the basics and nuances of the game. These leagues are financed by major league affiliates and gate receipts. 

The highest level of professional baseball under the major leagues is the AAA League, made up of the International League and the Pacific Coast League. Teams like the Durham Bulls, Toledo Mudhens, Albuquerque Isotopes and Salt Lake Bees, thirty in all. The two branches of the AAA League select their playoff participants on the basis of a split season result, one team that has the best record in the first half of the season the other the last half. The winners of each  of the three game series play a single game for the AAA League Championship.

Most sports fans are probably unaware that the 2024 AAA Championship game was played on Sept. 28 at Las Vegas Ballpark between the PCL representative Sugar Land Space Cowboys from Houston and the IL Omaha Storm Chasers from Nebraska. The Space Cowboys won the game 13-6, a rather football-like score, in front of 8,007 fans.

The point is that this contest, between the talented veterans of a 148 game regular season, has much more athletic validity than a college football game at any level, or even an NFL game.