The Rule
...ry once in a long while you get a decently hard slap across the wrists. In football, for a period of sixty minutes, at any given moment, it is the job of eleven ferocious defenders to hit, tackle, and bring down one man with a little leather ball. A play does not stop until points are scored or one man lies at the bottom of a pile of men trying to crush him. The physical difference for a college football player and an NFL player is strictly numbers. The physical perfection that the athlete of the NFL are in is so vastly beyond what most college kids can fathom. At every college there is that one guy. He thinks he is so cool because he has been working out since he was six. He takes muscle enhancers and follows a strict diet. He can bench press almost 375 pounds. Remarkable for an average college student. Or perhaps there is a smaller, faster track star comes along who has been running all of his life. He prides himself on his forty yard dash time of 4.4 seconds. Both of these athletic feats are impressive. But not so impressive when an NFL running back, one of the smaller players on the field can bench press over 525 pounds. Or when a quarterback comes along who can take hits, throw a football 100 yards easily, and can also run a 4.2 second 40 yard dash. That’s just lightning on turf. When linemen can weigh up 400 pounds and 275 pound tight end can leap 44 inches straight up in the air. One would be hard pressed to find many high school kids who could pull any of those numbers. The mental difference of the game comes right down to common sense and experiences. It is not just intelligence, there is also an instinctual part of the game. It is always impressive to see the little smart kid who score 1600 on an S.A.T. test. That’s pretty smart but it does not compare to the mental capacity of a quarterback who has to memorize 200 offensive plays, 25 offensive sets, 20 defensive sets, and 60 defensive blitz packages. He then must be able to decipher though all of them in the span of four seconds in each play. Players who are in their sophomore year in college or below, cannot handle this kind of mental strain. Plain and simple. One perfect example: Maurice Clarret. As a freshman tailback, he led the Ohio State Buckeyes to a National championship in 2003. He was hailed as the greatest running back in the NCAA that year by many. He was a phenomenal player, no questions asked. Where he excelled physically with a textbook running back physique, he undoubtedly lacked in the mental and emotional fortitude that one must possess to make it to the next tier of professional athletes. He bought into all of the hype and he began contemplating entering the NFL draft as a freshman. Needless to say, the NCAA would not allow it. So, instead of coming back to Ohio State as a marvelous sophomore tailback, he decided to throw a tantrum and whine to anyone and everyone who would listen, including courts of appeals and eventually the Supreme court. He became so inflated with his own image and destiny that he even went as far as too forsake his collegiate scholarship and put all his chips in with the NFL. Sadly for him, he lost and was now without an NFL draft bid and without a spot on a defending national championship football tea...