This issue of the best college team being able to beat the worst pro team came up in another thread. The overwhelming opinion was the pro team would not only win but dominate every time they played. This was specifically in regards to football. I completely agree with this.
My question is: are there any team sports where a college (or other 2nd tier team) could pull off an upset over a pro team? I’m thinking specifically in hockey. Could a college goalie play out of his mind and carry his team to a win? Or would the pros’ dominance in all other areas of the game overcome even a great goalie? How about a baseball pitcher maybe? Are there any sports where this might be possible?
FYI- I’m really only interested in team sports here. A college age (or younger) Tiger Woods or Venus Williams is not really what I’m interested in.
The last time we did this thread (it’s a fairly common idea) it was mentioned that in certain sports, particularly baseball and to a lesser degree hockey, one key player could dominate a game. The pitcher in baseball is much more capable of dictating the course of a game than a hockey goalie, but one player having the game of a lifetime could easily dominate players who are technically of a higher level.
Whether it’s a direct answer to your question or not, I would love to see the Indianapolis Colts play the LSU Tigers with some consideration given to the football rules differences. That game ought to give you a reasonable test of the theory.
The same Colts that just lost by 7 to the Patriots? I know they were down 31-10, so maybe those were garbage time touchdowns, but still…
It could be done in soccer. Lower division clubs beat Premier League teams consistently in the FA and Carling Cups in England. A team just needs to park the proverbial bus when defending, and then take advantage of the very limited chances on a counter attack, set-piece, drawing a penalty, etc.
I agree with the notion of a college hockey team doing it with a hot goalie, too.
Oxford University and the Other University have beaten and very occasionally continue to beat professional first-class cricket teams, although granted the first-class teams are rarely at full strength.
I’ll do a quick search later on the past 5 years for those 2 competitions, but my guess is that at least 5 of the 20 Premier League teams go out to a lower division club every year in the FA/Carling. So, 5 out of 40 possibilities per year is my guess. I’d say 2 of those 5 go out to clubs that are 2 divisions lower. Just in Jan '10, Leeds knocked out Manchester United in the FAC, and I think Leeds were the 3rd tier that season.
It’s too much for me right now to go more than 3 years back just because it’s hard to remember something like, “Were West Brom in the Coca Cola League that year, or the Premier League, and were Hull still up?” etc. But in the FAC alone, I counted 3 upsets in 2011 (Newcastle lost to Stevanage, which has to have been at least League 1), 5 in 2010 (2 were to clubs more at least 2 levels down), and 5 in 2009 (1 was to a club 2 levels down).
United didn’t play their strongest team against Leeds, but it was a strong enough team that winning is expected. And I think that case can be made for all of them. Sure, they’re maybe resting their top gk and striker, but they’re fielding players they feel can win the match. Add in the Carling Cup, and the numbers surely get worse for Premier League teams, though they certainly do field younger and less experienced players there.
The best college football team might have 10 future NFL-quality players on its roster. And we’re talking about NFL prospects, who aren’t even NFL-ready yet. The Colts have 53 NFL-ready players, despite their 0-12 record.
The Colts would beat LSU roughly 99 times out of a 100.
One issue with hockey is that it doesn’t really fit your scenario in that the NHL doesn’t use the college system in Canada and the US to develop it’s players, but rather the Junior and AHL leagues (although several American players play NCAA, they usually spend some time in the AHL before making the jump to the bigs).
That said, rookie goalies can - and do - come into professional leagues and make all the difference in a championship run. To use an example out of college, Ken Dryden played for the Cornell Big Red until his graduation with a BA, and generally kicked ass, winning a ton of championships. He signed with the Montreal Canadiens after graduation, and played a handful of regular season games before backstopping the team to a Stanley Cup; the first of 6 over the next 8 years (this while taking a year off in a contract dispute and completing a law degree!).
Patrick Roy (Canadiens), Antti Niemi (Chicago) are more recent rookie examples that I can think of off the top of my head of a hot goalie minding the nets through successful wins to a Stanley Cup.
Thing is…could they have done it with a lower-tier team playing in front of them?
I doubt it, simply because the goalie very rarely ever scores any goals.
Players making the jump to the NHL from the AHL often comment on the increased speed of the game and the tougher opponents - these are the best players in the world, after all. Even a team that’s playing with a lot of young rookies or AHL call-ups as injury replacements still usually has some veterans to lead the charge. Older players in the AHL are players that for whatever reason didn’t make it any further; they are not as good as the older players in the NHL.
That said, I could imagine a well-coached AHL team winning some games against NHL teams, but I don’t think they’d be very successful over the span of several games. Perhaps the Edmonton Oilers of recent years is a fair enough comparison: they have incredibly talented players in Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle, Magnus Paajarvi and, this year, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (RNH is sick!) but they didn’t make the playoffs the past few years, and are currently out of the playoff picture this year. These are very, very good young players, but they cannot consistently beat the pros.
See the 1980 USA vs. Soviet game where a bunch of college kids beat one of the greatest collection of All Stars on the planet (a collection of All Stars that was used to beating down NHL teams).
It has happened more than once. Current Olympic contests are mostly pro vs pro, but going back into the 80’s and earlier shows us what some college kids can do on a rare occasion. Key word: Rare
I have seen college baseball teams beat major league teams on occasion (the San Francisco Giants used to play exhibitions against, I think, Santa Clara University). However, I am not sure if the college teams were allowed to use metal bats, which would be a significant advantage.
College baseball teams have beaten MLB teams (split squads) in spring training. I know Boston College beat (some players from) the Red Sox last year or the year before.
ETA: No, the college teams can’t use aluminum bats.
As others have said, I could see this happening in soccer, if for no other reason, because the margins of victory are typically small enough that one or two plays could overcome even a large skill difference. They’d probably still lose more often than not, but I imagine this is where they’d have the highest chance of winning.
I see hockey being next, also because of the typically small margins and the chance of lucky plays, but also because of how important the goalie is and how small the teams are. But because the margins are larger, those other factors won’t play in as much and they’ll have a worse chance here.
For baseball, I think it would all come down to the pitchers vs. the hitters. I imagine a really good college team could have some quality pitching prospects. Still, the MLB pitchers will be accustomed to pitching to MLB hitters and MLB hitters will be used to hitting MLB pitchers, but I could see a spectacular pitcher being able to make the difference occasionally.
I’d put basketball as far less likely than any of those. You could have a rare college team packed with future NBA potential, but most of them will still probably end up being journeymen or servicable backups. You do have the chance that one or two exceptional players could make a difference, but you’ll have the same level of talent on the NBA team. And because of how much scoring there is and the larger margins of victory, it will wash out a lot of the impact that luck will play.
But football is far and away the least likely for a lot of reasons. Part of it is how much more diluted the talent is in college, but the larger factors are that it is so much more a team sport that can’t be won or lost by just a couple star players and that the professional and college games are just so fundamentally different. This is proven time and again when so many players and coaches with impressive resumes in college flop in the NFL, but you seldom see a top NBA or MLB prospect fail as often or as spectacularly. The speed and size of NFL players is enormously different, the complexity of the offences and defences is magnitudes higher. And for the team component, many of the best teams in the NFL often have players who have several years building a rapore, where only the very best college players get more than 2 years of playing time and each year they do play is with a heavily changed roster. Yes, a good play or two can easily swing a close game, but they would be so utterly dominated that all those fluke plays would mean is that they have a chance of a score or two, they’d still lose by no less than 8-10 touchdowns. The only way I see a college team even having a glimmer of hope is if the worst NFL team has absolutely zero chemistry and is horribly coached, but that’s definitely not the Colts.
Keep in mind that the promotion/relegation system makes this far from being cut-and-dry. Some current Football League Championship teams have long histories in the Premier League (and its predecessor).
Lower division college (American) football teams sometimes beat top teams as well. Do you all remember when Appalachian State upset Michigan not too long ago?
But I expect that the gulf between the NFL and college teams is simply much wider.
While in theory a hot goalie could stymie an NHL team, I think that in practice any goaltender playing college hockey will have way too many holes in his game. NHL shooters would eat him alive, especially given the number of chances they’d be able to generate against a college defence.
I think that your best chance of knocking off an NHL would be a World Junior (U20) national team. Younger players to be sure, but Team Canada will be entirely composed of players who’ve either already been drafted by NHL teams, or who are expected to go in the first two rounds(Team USA would be similar). That makes a big difference is that you’ve weeded up the non-professional caliber players from the bottom of the lineup. The key is to get that hotshot goalie – Team Canada hasn’t had one in some time.