Lots of good points made here already, but I’ll just add that not all tenure-track faculty jobs are created equal. Just like how attending Harvard is different from attending SFSU, is different from Smith college. But professors at all those schools got their PhDs and postdoctoral training at the top 5 schools.
At some schools, professors mostly teach. At others, they mostly supervise the research of their graduate students. The resources and missions of different schools make it so that the experience of being a professor varies widely. If you do want to be a professor, why? Yes, there is more intellectual freedom in this job than most, but what you can do with that freedom depends on circumstances.