there used to be a game played after the super bowl or nfl championship game where the nfl champion would play a team of college all stars. now i know that the nfl champs or super bowl champs won most of them but the college all stars also won some as well.
now we are talking about college all stars so you are getting the cream of the durn crop. but then most had never played together so they had that working against them. additionally, you were playing the best team in pro football. and while i can see them caring less about the game i would still think that as a pro who had just won it all i wouldn’t want to lose to a bunch of college kids.
neta: just double checked. last one was in 76 when the college all stars played the steelers and the steel curtain defense. not surprisingly, they were shut out.
The game would get called after a few plays because Auburn wouldn’t have enough players left that could walk out on the field. First one down would be Newton after his offensive line get trampled.
This debate is pretty tired and overdone, but there’s one aspect that usually doesn’t get mentioned. While the Pro team, especially in football, is far faster and more athletic it’s also much, much better prepared. NFL teams have resources that most college teams don’t in terms of video, facilities and coaches and scouts. NFL teams have dozens of game tapes on their opponents and are experts at schemes for it. NFL teams have no restriction on preparation time and practice as if there is nothing else of concern in the world. Colleges are restricted pretty tightly to 20 hours of practice time a week I believe and with the size and depth of college rosters individual players get far less attention and direction than Pros with much lower coach-to-player ratios.
Agreed. Not only are you still dealing with roughly the same amateur:pro ratio (or in this case, HS:BCS), you’re talking about an age difference that spans one of the largest growth/development periods in the teenage male. The domination at the line of scrimmage would make the game a joke.
I think the hockey argument is flawed, since playing college is the exception, rather than the rule. A 23 year old goalie should be able to hold his own against NHLers if he’s worth his salt, and Craig was already drafted by the NHL.
A more apt analogy would be the Calder cup champs versus a bottom rung NHL team (like my Ottawa Senators, lol…). The AHL team would lose 29 times out of 30, and badly, too.
I agree with the baseball example…
someone like Straussburg could have run through a pro lineup. (I really hope he comes back from his arm trouble… loved to watch that guy pitch).
As for the College All-Stars vs. the NFL Champion, this fiasco did end in the 70s, as mentioned above. However, I remember reading that the Packers used to lose this game in the early 60’s because they didn’t care, didn’t want to play and didn’t want to get hurt. Can’t say as I blame them. But somewhere along the line, the pros started to care, and the game became an annual joke. The pros repeatedly beat the College All-Stars.
Duke could not hang with an NBA team. Jesus. I think last year’s Wizards would have beaten Duke 185-65 in a 48 minute game. A Butler team the heart and soul and superstar of which was Gordon Hayward took Duke to the absolute brink. Gordon Hayward is currently averaging 3 points in 11 minutes per game in the NBA. His teammates aren’t doing that.
Last year’s Wizards had Arenas, Josh Howard (or Caron Butler) Antawn Jamison (or Al Thornton), Mike Miller, Randy Foye, and Brendon Haywood in their rotation, and every single one of those guys was a better player in college than Gordon Hayward, and has since been playing against NBA competition with NBA coaching. It just doesn’t make any sense. If there’s ever a college team that can beat a pro team, it will win every college game by a factor of 10 and its players will all be drafted at the top of the draft. That’s how you’ll know. If a team has to come back to win games on a regular basis like Auburn did, or if it actually loses games to college teams like Duke did, that isn’t one of those times.
The question wasn’t “can a college team be better than a pro team?” it was if a college team could win. Those are vastly different questions.
Kentucky had it’s entire starting lineup go in the first round last year. Lebron dominated as a rookie without going to college. I’m not saying that a college basketball team is better, but when you only really need 7 players it’s certainly possible that you’d get a perfect storm of recruiting and have them be competitive with the lower tier teams. It’s much less likely that you’ll get 50+ pro caliber players on a team like is needed for football.
That’s the question I was addressing. It really isn’t possible. I mean, if you had a magic box and could rewind time and make them play 1,000,000 times, I’m not sure they’d ever win one. The college teams are closer to a team full of me than they are to a team full of NBA players.
Sometimes college teams do play Major League Baseball teams in Spring Training, and I believe they win every once in a while. Of course, the MLB team is playing a bunch of scrubs who will be assigned to the minor leagues or cut altogether once the regular season starts.
The best CFL team would be annihilated by any NFL team. The score would be something in the order of 51-0. A CFL team simply doesn’t have the offensive line to allow for any play to be successfully run; every play from scrimmage would be a disaster.
However, the best CFL team would utterly crush any NCAA team.
Panthers vs. Auburn? If the Panthers keep the pedal to the metal, they’ll win 90-0.
Someone who cares about this and has some free time could look up the size of the Auburn linemen and compare and contrast them to the linemen who play for Carolina.
I strongly suspect that the pro players are just plain bigger.