PGA is to NFL as Apple is to Orange

Following Bubba Watston's second Master's victory in three years, I fired up Twitter to see what people had to say about the conclusion. One particular tweet from Bomani Jones caught my eye and it was actually about Jordan Spieth, who finished three strokes behind Watson and tied with Jonas Blixt for second. Spieth is a 20 year-old on the PGA Tour who was nipping at Watson's heels all day. He was one missed birdie put on 16 to cut Watson's lead to two with two holes to play and put a little pressure on him.

Needless to say, it was an amazing performance from the young man and we should expect to see him competing at a high level for many years.

But the tweet stood out to me because of how the individual commented on Spieth's play to address an issue in another sport:

"anyone think golf needs a rule requiring players to stay in school for three years? or that only apply to sports that you like to watch?"

My first thought here was that Jones was talking about the NBA where the age limitation has always been a hot-button issue for the league. But that only requires individuals to be one year outside of high school in order to enter the draft. The only sport that requires three years is the NFL.

I'm not totally sure what Jones is going for with his tweet, to be honest. But it sounds like he is suggesting that the rule for making college football players be three years removed from high school is detrimental to the league/players. I hope that isn't the case, because that just wouldn't make sense.

Say what you will about the NBA's age limit, but the NFL's is a necessity from a very basic level - it makes athletes take a few years to continue growing, becoming bigger, faster, and stronger to take on guys who may be more than 10 years their senior. The NFL has an age limit because if it didn't, then college students going any earlier would get seriously hurt. And I just don't think that there is any question about that.

To suggest that there could be a discussion around abolishing the age requirement for the NFL is absurd at best. There is no chance of an 18 year-old golfer getting hurt playing with men twice his age. It is almost a guarantee that an 18 year-old football player would get hurt by a man twice his size due to the extra years he has had to develop.

The argument isn't just apples to oranges. Its just straight bananas.