The correct answer might be, they are the same or real close. Yup, in the NFL they rest their best players; some don't play at all ---for meaningless pre-season games that exist only to make NFL owners money by charging their loving fans good money for games that don't count. The NFL then follows up those confounding scrimmage games, that have no effect on the season standings with: a real season, a 12 team playoff out of 32 teams, and a champion.
The NCAA's approach is even more perplexing. They have no scrimmages or pre-season games at all. Most NCAA teams stop playing in late November or early December and then resume playing for real after a 10 month break in September. They have 130 teams, of which, 60+ are practically guaranteed, under any condition, to never make the playoff. UCF didn't lose a game for 2 years in the regular season and never got a whiff. If your team is from: AAC, Conf USA, MAC, Sun Belt, an independent who is not ND, or from the Mountain West----Congrats, your path to the playoffs has ended before the first coin-flip of the first game, thanks for playing.
That leaves you with the Power 5 conferences and their approx 70 teams, and 4 teams get to make the playoff. I will repeat that---4 spots for the remaining 5 conferences? What idiot signed that deal? Ok, 1 conference at a minimum is left out every year. In the 1st 5 years, the PAC 12 has been left out 3 times, the Big Ten left out twice. Smart thinking guys!
The math is already never in your odds, with 1 loss often dooming your season. The 2014 TCU team was really good. The 2015 OSU team will probably be the greatest team and collection of NFL stars to miss the playoff with 1 loss. UCF squad in 2017 was a amazing team. The 2018 Buckeyes suffered 1 loss, and never came close. With 130 teams in D1 and 4 teams making it---- less than 1 in every 30 teams make the playoff. In the NFL, 12 of 32 teams make the playoff.
The real whammy is the bowl games. What do playoff games mean to elite teams? They mean everything. For the fifth year, no player on any playoff team who is uninjured or not suspended has skipped a playoff game. Period. When games matter, the stars play.
In non-playoff games, elite players skipping dopey non-playoff bowl games was a epidemic in 2017 & 18. LSU had 11 players skip it's bowl game this year. Georgia had 8. Michigan had a 4th-6th round maybe....running back skip his bowl game to prep for the NFL. Besides a few extra practices, a chance to travel to a good (or bad) location for a steak dinner, a team vs. the other team bowling game mid-week, what do these games mean?
As a OSU fan even the Rose Bowl was a scrimmage, a meaningless post-season game. It gave no team that won chance to advance or improve to anything. It produced a trophy no one cares about. OSU finished 13-1, the end. The NCAA and Bowl Locations make money off loving fans who travel far from home and spend lots of money on games that have no effect on the final outcome of the season standings. If OSU beat Washington by 90 points, they still come in behind ND which got drilled by 30. All things considered, with the expense incurred by teams to watch meaningless bowl games, they are a worse deal for fans than NFL pre-season. The NFL plays it's scrimmages in August---The NCAA has their scrimmages in Late December and New Years Day.
