NFL is different, not better.(NFL)(Bob Stoops)(Interview)

OK, I'm Bob Stoops, and I've got a decision to make. I make $2.5 million a year coaching the Oklahoma Sooners, and life is very good. Norman is a nice college town; it's not Malibu, but it's not Starkville, either. I'm so popular in the state of Oklahoma, I could run for governor and get 80 percent of the votes without campaigning.

Now, here comes New York Giants owner Wellington Mara. A nice man with good intentions, he desperately needs a coach and is willing to pay just about anything to pry me from my personal paradise. I'm going to give it all up--job security, three months' down time, a machine that recruits itself--to stroke my ego and prove I can coach in the NFL.

Yep, I'm going to trade it all for 18-hour workdays, pampered, pompous athletes playing for the next payday, no vacation, no down time, and, by the way, no margin for error. And they'll throw me a couple extra million a year for my troubles.

Are you nuts?

"It's not just a different game," Stoops says. "It's a different world."

And there you have it. Why would any college coach in his right mind want to coach in the NFL? Once you've hit the $1 million-a-year salary mark, money ceases to be a motivation. At some point, quality of life has to enter the evaluation. Steve Spurrier's two-year NFL flirtation should seal it for any college coach with an itch to scratch: The grass isn't always greener on the pros' FieldTurf.

Spurrier said he wanted a new challenge, that things were stale and expectations unreasonable at Florida. Great--go coach Central Florida. A move to the NFL just isn't worth it. In college football, coaches are CEOs with complete control and, in some cases, are bigger than their universities. In the NFL, coaches are caretakers on a short leash, and players tug the line. NFL coaches are baby sitters and therapists; college coaches are patriarchs of a program.