Will Stein thinks college football is drifting closer and closer to the NFL, and he sounds perfectly fine with that trend going all the way.
On his weekly radio show, the Kentucky coach said the sport already feels like a professional pipeline and argued there’s no reason the two levels should keep operating with different setups.
“It’s getting more and more like the NFL. I’m just waiting for when they literally make the hashes the same as the NFL, the time is the same as the NFL. I don’t know why we don’t play the same rules,” said Stein.
He took that idea a step further, comparing football to baseball’s uniform playing surface and dimensions at higher levels.
“I mean, in baseball, once you get to 12, 14 years old, you’re playing on a 60-foot, 6-inch mound, 90-foot base paths, 300 feet fences. I don’t know why we don’t just play the same exact game as the National Football League, especially because college football is basically like a farm system for the league. Just play the same game, have the same kickoff rules, the same everything.”
Stein’s point lands even harder now that college athletes are being paid like professionals, turning the college game into what he described as a farm system that’s also lucrative for the players in it.
One area he’d especially like to see changed is the kickoff return game. Stein said the current version has lost its edge, with most kicks sailing into the end zone and far fewer returns than fans used to see from players like former UK standouts Craig Yeast and Derek Abney.
“There’s zero excitement for the return game, and it’s still a dangerous play. There’s still kids running down at 22 miles an hour, having full-speed collisions,” the Kentucky coach said. “I have zero clue why years ago they didn’t just say, ‘Let’s play the same exact rules as the NFL.’”
Got to admit, it makes sense to me.
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