The most important thing an NFL franchise can have is a “franchise quarterback.” While it’s possible to win a Super Bowl without one, a top-tier quarterback can make a franchise a contender for a solid decade, and sometimes for multiple decades. Indeed, the single biggest difference between the Green Bay Packers and their NFC North brethren is quarterback play, where the Bears are hopeless, the Lions top out with the good-but-not-great Matthew Stafford, and the Vikings occasionally hit on someone like Daunte Culpepper, but never for long enough.
In college football this is not the case, which is actually kind of weird.