Which sport has the biggest/smallest difference between college and pro?

The Game Room
1

Well, another college football NCG is in the books. Which is usually about the time for the annual “Could the college champs beat the worst team in the NFL?” thread. (Although this year it’s different because it’s “Could Clemson beat the Browns?” instead of “Could Bama beat the Browns?” :smiley: )

The answer, of course, is no. The NFL team would demolish the college team. The spread would probably be in the triple digits. A pro team is 53 players that made it into the NFL, and all the attendant size, strength, speed, and experience advantages, while the college team is maybe 6-8 guys that will go in the NFL (but have a lot of growing to do) and 80 guys whose last game will be in college, if they even played a down then. Heck, the third stringers on the NFL team would probably win in a walk.

I imagine similar stats would be true of Basketball, Baseball, Soccer, and Hockey. The pro team would crush the college team. But I’m curious which sport has the biggest and smallest differences. Could the college hockey goalie stand on his head and make the final something respectable like 3-0, or is the pro Hockey team going to make it a 27-0 bruising? Is the college baseball pitcher going to have the game of his life and keep the score differential in the single digits, or will the pro team rack up a dozen hits each inning? You get the idea.

Obviously, just looking at the raw score isn’t going to tell the whole story, since running up 20 points in soccer is much different than doing so in basketball, so use whatever criteria you think best.

Personally, I think Football is going to have the biggest disadvantage, while Hockey and Basketball (where pro stars are routinely recruited out of high school so many of the college teams will be the ‘not good enough for the pros’ guys) fighting it out over second and third place. Soccer will probably come in 4th just based on the general low scoring nature of the game not making it horrific. Baseball I could see the college guys getting some lucky hits to at least put themselves on the board, and even the pros batting .500 against a college pitcher won’t run it up SO awfully.

What do you think? Same order, or have I totally muffed it?

2

smallest - wrestling?
biggest - basketball

3

I would sorta like to keep the discussion to the five sports listed in the OP, to keep niche sports from dominating either end (and also I’d like to be able to follow the discussion!).

Why basketball?

4

In baseball, college teams beat pro ones quite often in the preseason, although (a) the college players might be allowed to use metal bats, while the pro teams stick to wood, and (b) usually, the pro teams are still on spring training rosters.

In basketball, a college team stacked with “one-and-dones” might have a chance against the weakest team in the NBA.

Soccer may depend on what rules you are using. NCAA allows pretty much unlimited substitution (IIRC, the only limits are, a player that is removed cannot return to the match until that half or OT period ends, except that one “return” per player is allowed in the second half), but if it is limited to 16 players per team and no more than 3 substitutes in the match, the only way I see a college team winning is if they slow the match down.

Football and hockey? No - depth will prevail just about every time.

5

I can’t see a college team having any chance in basketball. The best team in college MAY have a NBA first overall draft pick and maybe one other first round pick, the WORST team in basketball could have multiple first overall picks.

I can’t imagine the Fab Five or even Larry Johnson/Stacey Augmon’s UNLV teams staying close to the 76’s or Charlotte, let alone winning a game.

6

I think basketball might be as lopsided as football – think of how the best NBA players have improved from their rookie season to their peak. There’d be 5 college stars, significantly improved vs their college days, vs (on average) 1 or 2 college stars with 3 or 4 college solid players, none of them beyond college-level skill. NBA vs college games might be as bad as USA vs Nigeria in the 2012 Olympics.

7

Soccer would be pretty rough. US college soccer is mostly Americans, and MLS has a pretty significant foreign population which are better than the Americans they’re displacing. It’d be like if the NBA consisted of the best college basketball players, plus they got to pick players from a different planet where the players were better.

I was thinking basketball would be closer since you see Kentucky or Kansas have 4 or 5 first round picks like every other year, but looking at the 76ers roster, they have 6 first round picks on their team, and they were awful.

8

In any major sport the difference between a college team and a big league team is enormous. I am assuming here that “Pro team” means the major leagues. A tiny independent league baseball team might not actually be very good.

Anyway, let’s review.

  1. Could a college football team beat an NFL team?

If you played 1000 games the NFL team would win 1000 times and never by any spread less than fifty points.

  1. Could a college basketball team beat an NBA team?

Absolutely not. 1000 games, 1000 blowouts. Once in a great while a college player is immediately ready to be an NBA superstar, but they’re few and far in between and with a supporting cast of college guys, the NBA team would isolate him and wipe the floor with his hapless teammates.

  1. Could a college hockey team beat an NHL team?

It’s not impossible. In all likelihood they’d be eaten alive. The difference here, though, is that hockey is disproportionately result-dependent upon the goalie. It is quite plausible the college goalie could steal the game - not very often, but the 1980 classic between the USA and USSR is really not very far from this very scenario. Jim Craig - who went on to a brief and mediocre NHL career lasting all of 30 games - had the night of his life, and it won the game.

  1. Could a college baseball team beat an MLB team?

Again, it’s possible - an incredible longshot, but like hockey, baseball is a game extremely dependent upon a single player, the pitcher. Some college pitchers are close to MLB ready. If one has the game of his life, he could win it for his team.

  1. Could an NCAA soccer team beat a pro team from a major soccer league (EPL, LA Liga, Bundesliga, etc.)

They’d have trouble getting the ball out of their own end. No chance at all.

9

RickJay, I think you misread the OP. Or possibly stopped reading after the first line.

It would be enormously unlikely for any college team to win in any of the sports. That’s not the question. The question is where the dominance is greatest. Yes, Basketball and Football will both have blowouts, and Baseball and Hockey might be sorta close, but which blowout will be worse and which ‘close game’ will be closer?

10

I don’t think you understood my response, then.

Dominance can be expressed a number of ways, but the most obvious one is by the likelihood of victory. At the risk of pointing out the insanely obvious, the point of a sport is to win. If in fact you have no chance at all of winning, as a colelge football team would not, then that is perfect dominance. The SCORE is irrelevant, and in fact might not reflect that actual difference in talent, since at some point a pro team would just start trying to run out the clock and not injure anyone.

“Enormously unlikely” is not a correct answer for all the sports you’ve mentioned. A college football team will NEVER beat an NFL team, ever. A college hockey team COULD beat an NHL team; it’s not likely, but it is possible. That reflects the level of domination, which in turn reflects the structure of the sport; is is the nature of football, you see, that the outcome of the sport is determined firstly by the relative strength of the offensive and defensive lines. An NFL team is going to steamroll the college team’s lines on every down. You could spot the college team the best wide receiver in the world and it wouldn’t matter. He’d never catch a pass. But a college hockey team could have a goalie good enough to stop every one of 53 shots; even if his teammates are pretty bad, it’s possible a very fine college goalie could win the game. Hockey cannot be dominated the same way because of the effect of the goalie.

The “closeness” of the game is not, to my mind, the correct way to measure dominance. Of course the mean score of the football game will be something like 70-0, and the mean score of the basketball game will be something like 120-50. Which is more dominant? I don’t even know how to measure that, and don’t see how it matters (basketball teams, especially, let up after the game is out of reach.)

To the eye, any of these sports will almost always look absolutely stupid, but random chance is such that the football game could be 88-0 or it could be 35-0. Either way it’s going to be an awful thing to watch. Similarly, the baseball game could quite possibly go 32-0 or it could be 9-1, but the difference will be the product of pure luck, not closeness in skill. You will be profoundly embarrassed for the college team either way.

Having said that, the one that will LOOK the ugliest, subjectively speaking, is definitely football. At least the college baseball team will appear to be playing baseball and will be making baseball plays like catching fly balls and fielding grounders and stuff. The college football team won’t be able to run a successful offensive play.

11

Good question. I’d say the gap between the highest level of college and the highest level of a pro sport is basketball. That’s mostly based on the ability of a rookie to make a huge impact on an NBA roster. You see rookies one year removed from college have an immediate impact more frequently than in the NFL or certainly than in MLB.

12

Sand (beach) volleyball became an NCAA sport last year. That’s 2 on 2, so probably easier for an elite pair to be able to do well.

USC won the opening tournament, the top USC pair, Claes/Hughes had played at pro levels previously. It looks like they got to the semifinals of an AVP event in 2015. The AVP wasn’t in the best of shape at that point, so that’s possibly not a great judge.

I found another note saying that they placed 17th in a FIVB (international pro circuit) Major in 2016, which ended up sounding more impressive than it was, since anyone who didn’t make it out of pool play gets 17th. A look at their three matches shows they were all losses, but they did take a set in one match, and the match against the number 1 seeded team wasn’t a complete blowout.

So a top college beach team against the very top in international professional competition still loss, but was not embarrassed.

13

Not US sports, but University teams in Cricket do play side matches against Test (top level representative) teams regularly and occasionally win. Of course the Test sides are typically playing for match practice there.

As it is, there is a difference whether a lower level team could face a top tier one and how much of a leap it is for the individual players. AFAIK, College is the main feeder for new talent for pro Basketball and American football so obviously the skills and talent is transferable.
Do new players typically become part of the starting squad immediately or is there a period of apprenticeship? I looked up one of the few American Football players I have heard of, Tom Brady and what I can see is that he was MVP in the Super Bowl in his second year. Presumably, if the gap is brigable for talented players and I suppose his team had no one in his postiomn when he came

14

Soccer, along with hockey and baseball are weird, in that the talented college amateur teams aren’t necessarily the next level down in competitiveness, unlike football and basketball.

So in the case of baseball, you’re comparing a college team with major leaguers, when in fact, a better comparison might be a college team with a AAA or AA club (or even A club maybe). Same thing in hockey and soccer; you’d probably better compare the college teams with the mid/high level minor league teams, not the majors.

And I’m not sure how they’d fare. I know that Clemson or Alabama would get absolutely stomped by even the wretched Browns, but I’m not so sure that say… TCU would necessarily get stomped by the nearby AA Frisco RoughRiders.

15

It worked in Space Jam though.

16

If gymnastics had a pro league, then it would probably be the other way round. Lowlier college teams could beat the pros.

17

Same for flip cup.

18

Brady is a bit of a special case - he was drafted very late (199th) and only became a starter in his second year after the Patriots usual starting QB (Drew Bledsoe) got injured in the second game of the season.

A lot of players are drafted as ‘projects’ and given a year or two on the bench to learn the system and get up to speed. Some teams don’t have the luxury of a decent starter at the position, and a QB doesn’t get the development time needed, and they never really perform to their potential. That’s one of the reasons football is going to have a wide divergence between college and pro: even the really good college players have a lot of learning to do before they’re ready to play pro.

19

Could a team of college all-stars beat the reigning NFL champs. It has happened. But not since 1963.

Here’s a fun quote, “In the 1940s, the games were competitive affairs that attracted large crowds to Soldier Field. The college all-stars had the benefit of being fully integrated, since the NFL’s league-wide color barrier did not apply to the squad; as such, black players such as Kenny Washington (who played in the 1940 contest) were allowed to play in the game.”

20

Your soccer example is not entirely accurate. Socccer is a young mans game and a lot can be said for a team playing together for four years (best case scenario)

“Wont get the ball out of their half” simply isn’t accurate.

I’ve played on club teams (who would get plowed by college teams) and at our best we held our own against teams featuring former internationals and NASL players.

I played on a college team whose schedule consisted of club teams and we held our own against a team that was mostly consisted of the Ghana national team.

NO its not the same as SMU beating Swansea. But I’m simply saying your analysis is a bit exaggerated.