Is it more fair? In a study of 156 college overtime games from 2008-2013:
61.5% of the teams who play defensive first (that is, get the ball on offense second), win.
Seems like a pretty solid advantage to go second.
http://blog.minitab.com/blog/the-statistics-game/analyzing-college-football-overtimes
In another study of 328 games from 1996-2007:
55% of the teams that play defense first, win.
Also - 99% of the time (99%!) the coach will opt to play defense first after winning the coin toss. Clearly the coaches feel there is a major advantage to going on offense second.
This actually seems less fair than the way the NFL does it.