Why college football should not play exhibition games
By: will-vandervort August 24, 2015

I hear it all the time from a lot of college coaches, players, media and fans. They all say they would love to see college football do what the NFL does and play an exhibition game against another school.

I see the positives in doing that. First off, the players get to hit someone else other than one of their teammates. Secondly, the coaches get the opportunity to evaluate their players in a true-game situation. Finally, the schools can make some money along the way. It’s a win-win, right?

But at what risk?

The NFL began playing exhibition games from the very beginning. You can say most of the league’s first decade in the 1920s was nothing but an exhibition as it tried to get itself off the ground and compete with Major League Baseball. But preseason games really took off in the 1970s. When the NFL and AFL merged in 1970, NFL owners scheduled as many as six preseason games, while forcing season-ticket holders to purchase as many as three-preseason games a year or they could lose their season-tickets. This ran though the 1977 season, but when the league expanded to a 16-game schedule in 1978, preseason games were cut to four, which is where it stands today, with the exception of the two teams who play in the annual Hall of Fame Game each year.

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