10 Reasons Why College Sports Are Way Better Than Professional
10. Mike Gundy, the Oklahoma State football coach, freaked out on the media after their win over Texas Tech. Coach Gundy was upset with Jenni Carlson's column that suggested OSU QB Bobby Reid had a bad attitude. He freaked out in the press conference and it shows loyalty to his team.
9. It's times like when Mario Chalmers hit a three with 2 seconds in the Championship game against Memphis. It took them into overtime, which led to Kansas' victory over Memphis.
By the way--the time Michael Flowers hit the three-pointer with 2 seconds left to beat #9 Texas is up there too. And right after he hit the three he stole an inbounds pass--now that's heart.
8. College athletes (hopefully) don't do steroids to get ahead of their fellow athletes. They are pure and are actually as good as they perform without enhancers.
7. The fan based loyalty at college games is indescribable. When there are fans who go to the school or are alumni of the school, they have more of a connection to the team--it's like their family. Look at the student sections--Duke basketball, Wisconsin football's "Jump Around" and Penn State--what NFL team has gotten the whole stadium to do a white out??
6. Rivalries. There is nothing like a college rivalry game--it is the biggest thing of the season. It was huge in the 90's and has died down a little but the Ohio State/Michigan rivalry is HUGE. For Iowa fans it's the Iowa State/Iowa game every year. USC/UCLA. And the whole country knows about the Duke/UNC rivalry--there's nothing like it.
5. College athletes don't play for money. They play because they love the game, not for their million dollar contracts. Alabama coach Nick Saban even said it:
"The decision to return to this level came down to this question: Do I want to coach a bunch of immature, undisciplined football players...or do I want to coach college?"
4. The last minute upsets by the underdog. Iowa/Penn State two weekends ago was the biggest thing that's happened to our campus in years. Texas/Texas Tech a few weeks ago. What about George Mason who beat out top-seed UConn in overtime to make it to the Final Four. And in what is called the biggest upset in college football history: When Stanford upset #2 USC last year.
3. Tailgating. There is no comparison to college football tailgating. Most of the games have more people tailgating than the actual stadium capacity. The only NFL team that is comparable are the Packers but it's still not even close.
2. It says something when Coach K--a college coach-- is the coach for the USA Olympic basketball team instead of an NBA coach.
1. Tradition. The NFL has been around for only 40 years--by the 1920's Michigan and Notre Dame had already won 12 championships a piece. Colleges have so many different traditions: cheers, colors, mascots, rituals on the field and each college is known for a different one.
Fight with me if you must, but I will always think college athletics are better than professional sports. You watch pro sports if you want to watch an awesome athlete. You watch college sports if you love the game.
49 comments:
I agree for the most part, that college sports overall are better than pro sports, however some college sports, i believe, do not compare. but, the recent iowa victory over penn state and the after affect of the entire city, is just one example of how college football is better than pro.
I can agree and disagree with some of the points that you make. I partially agree with the fact that college students play for the love of the game, and not the money,however the reason they play in college is probably to go onto the professional level to make money. Also, while it's true that there's nothing better than a little college rivalry, pro sports have their fare share of rivalry as well (ie cross town show downs such as the cubs vs sox games)
i think that pro sports are so much better: i mean they leave legends among our community. for example: OJ simpson, michael vick, dennis rodman... thank you pro sports, what would we do without these upstanding citizens?
There is nothing else like college sports. No money issues, no hold outs, and no being traded from one rival team to another (i.e. yankees/red sox).
@jersey chaser
Kind of like Iowa produced Abe Satterfield and Cedric Everson in football.
Sports in general don't determine how a person acts in their spare time. It's much more complicated that that.
I have to disagree with this post Megan, I'm sorry. I like pro sports much more.
No comparison, college sports rule. I could watch college basketball or football all day, yard work suffers on Saturdays but on Sundays Pro Football or Basketball, one half is about all that I can tolerate.
I agree, college sports are better. Most college athletes are out there for the love of the game, knowing that they will never make it to the big show. They are out there playing for pride not for money.
I agree with you Megan. College sports athletes seem like they have more heart than some pros. Professionals get so caught up in the money aspect that they forget why they started playing in the first place. Also pro rivalries don't even come close to college ones.
i agree and disagree...points 9 and 10 are pretty weak arguments considering the following: dennis green as the az head coach...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_N1OjGhIFc...michael jordan's last second shot over the utah jazz will always be one on my favorite last sec clutch shots. or how about brett favre's OT 82 yd td pass to beat denver in 2007? pretty sweet especially if you're a packer fan.
ummmmm, how do you know for sure that college athletes are pure??? i know you said "hopefully" but hopefully won't win arguments especially when many athletes will do whatever it takes to get to the next level, regardless of pro or amateur status. i just don't think its fair to assume college athletes are more pure.
i liked what liss said about college students playing to get to the pro level and i agree with you as well. BUT, their ultimate goal (at least some) is to play in pro sports so they make the 7 figure income. Also, many athletes get benefits such as college paid for, food, rent, etc. many benefits aren't even made public but we all know they receive more than what is actually reported. for the most part, though, i agree with you and the students playing for the love of the game.
the fan support and pregame activities definitely beat pro sports...hands down. love, love, love the hangs before college games. especially in the big ten!!! great fan base!!!! and great point about history. the pros have their history but not nearly as long as some programs in college. good example, and this helps support your rivalry argument, is wisconsin vs minnesota. they've played 115 games with the first meeting in 1890!!! that's some history.
I agree with you entirely. I do not like professional sports and never will. College athletes do play their hearts out for the love of the game. One of the rivals you could of used as an example was Wisconsin vs. Minnesota for Paul Bunyan's axe, but we both know you don't like Bucky football! College football gets so many people at all different ages involved and everyone in the city basically. Tailgating is by far one of the best aspects of college football.. you couldn't of picked better Top 10 reasons
i agree for the most part. however, what about the super bowl? there isn't any one event in the U.S. that is more watched than that. you make a good argument, but college sports can't compare with the super bowl.
I agree, in comparing college sports to pro sports, the athletes show more dedication to the game and the love again because they do not have million dollar contracts.
GREAT POST!!!! the purity of college sports trumps that of the pros by 10x. i cant stand when people say pro sports are better. the greedy athletes holding out on their teams during training camp says too much on what they're really worried about and why they play the game.
I'm not a big sports fan (sorry), but I agree that college sports are better than professional. College athletes play for the love of the game, not for the money. Go Iowa!
i love what coach k did for the USA team this year and think his duke program is phenomenal. however, it was professional athletes that won the gold medal in beijing. all players were pro athletes and two out of three assistant coaches were at the professional level as well. that says something for the nba. but again, i'm not taking anything away from what coach k did...great job!!!
Sportsfanatic, you obviously don't understand the business end of the spectrum. This is how these people earn their living and support their families. There is no off-season for these guys, and since most professional careers are rather short lived (w/ no retirement plan), they need to soak up what they can while they're there. besides, if another play who they are better than is paid a certain amount, why shouldn't they make more? Not everything boils down to money; a lot of it boils down to respect and the principle of a less valuable player making a higher salary.
Jerry, great point. I was completely buying the point about an ncaa coach coaching the pros in the Olympics. There is a reason they send the pros to the Olympics instead of college players, BECAUSE THEY ARE BETTER. The higher the level of competition, the more entertaining the sport.
cts said...
i agree for the most part. however, what about the super bowl? there isn't any one event in the U.S. that is more watched than that. you make a good argument, but college sports can't compare with the super bowl.
great point!!! how about tiger woods? didn't he change an entire sport? more people/juniors are playing golf because of one person. nike is now one of the biggest golf brands in the world b/c of tiger woods. speaking of golf...about 600,000 people go to watch the FBR open in scottsdale. after all, it is the greatest show on grass. all of this is at the professional level. College is great, but the pros have some great moments as well.
ok, so i dont know much about sports either. the only thing i know is that lebron james never played college. since he is pretty much the hottest guy in professional or college sports, professional is way better.
xoxo
Katie
I'm leaving this message as a response to Jamie's. In your post you said college athletes play for the love of the game and not the money. I would argue otherwise because college athletes are paid. They are paid in the form of scholarships. Colleges invest in athletes and for many college athletes their motivation is the potential money they could make in the pros as well as keeping their scholarship.
WOW katie wheeler way to go. you have just disgraced the purpose of this blog. i thought you made great points megan, especially the one about penn state and the white out. i cant think of any professional team that does that. your point about the memphis/kansas game tho is not very valid. i feel fairly confident that there have been professional games which were sent into OT b/c of a last second shot.
Everyone here is naive. Professional sports entertain millions more people than college sports. In the end they are all just entertainers and its a job. In college its a job too. When you go to a university on a full ride you are thinking about going pro and getting paid and nothing else.
U are obivously not in college Matt. I know many girls who play college sports and they want to graduate more than "get paid."
bullshoops...lol! great, great point about katie AND last second shots.
college basketball is the greatest sport... the NCAA Tournament??? really??? it's better than Christmas... kinda like when Marquette beats the Badgers... I do prefer the NFL to college football though and completely agree about the selfishness of pro athletes compared to collegiate ones...
megan, college does have some sweet games where underdogs end up winning the big game but what about ny giants beating the new england patriots last year in the super bowl? wouldn't you consider that to be a big underdog win by ny? after all the giants were a 12 point underdog and the patriots were on the verge of going undefeated.
10 reasons to love pro sports more than college(and to disprove your points)...
10. Mike Gundy was protecting the innocence of his players. They need to grow up sooner or later so stop babying them. DISCREDIT!
9. No college basketball moment surpasses what M.J. did in Chicago. DISCREDIT!
8. College athletes do steroids just as much as the pros. DISCREDIT!
7. Green Bay's fan base is far greater than any college sports team. DISCREDIT!
6. I know you're not saying there is a bigger rivalry than the Rex Sox and Yankees. DISCREDIT!
5. Doug already make a good point on this. DISCREDIT!
4. The Iowa/Penn State game wasn't an upset. The Big Ten is weak and doesn't compare to the Pac 10. DISCREDIT!
3. Have you ever tailgated for a Packer Game? DISCREDIT!
2. It doesn't matter who you have coach the top basketball athletes in the world. I could have coached them to a gold metal. They were on autopilot. DISCREDIT!
1. Watching professional sports is a tradition. For some it's even a religion. To say any college team has more tradition than they Yankees is absurd! DISCREDIT!
0. No one loves the game more than a professional athlete because they know what it takes to succeed and not give up on their love of the game when it gets hard. CREDIT!
Obviously Alex doesn't know anything about sports. He is probably a bum. I side with Megan
As the daughter of a previous college football coach, I'm obviously going to say college. Although some of the points about pro sports are absolutely valid, I'd have to argue that the love of the game is what puts me over the edge. Why does it take a team to get to the finals in the NBA before anyone starts playing any defense? Sorry but no NBA coach is going to buy pizzas for all the students camped out for a week at a time waiting to get into Allen Fieldhouse to watch the Jayhawks (I know, I've witnessed it) There's a reason JoePa and Bobby Bowden have stuck around so long...I'll take a Rudy Ruttiger on my team any day over a Lebron James.
Hey joe, obviously you have no time or don't care to justify why you side with megan so...DISCREDIT! i side with alex for all the reasons except the big ten vs. the pac ten. pac 10 blows! big ten isn't too far away from that though.
so to better justify bob and alex's point, lets change 'Pac-10' to 'Big 12 South' or 'SEC'. Now can we agree that the Big 10 doesn't compare? I'd hate to see what would happen if Penn State, supposedly the best team in the Big 10, lined up against a Texas Tech or Florida. And Heids, you take Rudy, I'll take Lebron, and we'll see who wins 1,000,000/1,000,000 times. Any sport.
after reading over this blog and people's comments, only a few people have pointed out the fact that college athletes play sports in preparation of going pro. if they really cared about the sport, why would they leave college early? its a pretty common trend nowadays to see guys come in, get their year out of the way, and head straight to the draft. how can you argue they play for their school and for the love of the game when all their trying to do is get out?
i agree with megan's points for the most part. i definitely favor college sports over pro sports. i have never had a favorite pro team, for any sport. anytime there are games on tv, college games always take priority
why would anyone favor pro sports? those athletes get paid way too much....college football is where the heart is
let's think about this here:
college sports =
march madness/elite eight/final four
new year's bowl games
waaaaaay more exciting than any pro "finals" if you ask me. boring.
The only thing better about pro teams is fantasy leagues. it'd be sweet if they could somehow do fantasy teams for college sports.
I don't really have a preference on either, but I do have an opinion about pro fans. vs. college fans. Pro fans annoy the crop out of me because they seem much more fair weather. They could care less what "their team" is doing, unless they're winning. College sports have much fewer fair weather fans!!!!
In response to gohawks87...The only reason your saying that it because you're from Iowa, and you have no pro team to actually enjoy. The rest of the country claims their actually city team. But since everybody from Iowa has random affiliations with random teams across the country, I see where your coming from. Anyway, Pro sports all the way!
Point-counterpoint for "Alex"-refer to his post if you want to understand what I'm saying...
10. There's a reason they're called college kids. I'm willing to bet you (if you're out of college) would've considered yourself a little immature in college.
There's no need for the media to attack college students.
9. That's not to say that the NBA doesn't suck now.....
8. Sure they do. Everybody is like Dom Lattimer from "The Program". High school athletes do steroids too. I'd say wash.
7. So you're saying you're a Packers fan...btw how was that Vikings game a few weeks ago. We should've rolled you guys but we'll settle for the 28-27 win.
My point though, you have no idea what you're talking about if you think there aren't any great college fanbases out there. Ever here of Notre Dame, Texas, Penn State, Alabama???
6. Yeah there is...Auburn-Alabama. They actually kill each other over this. Red Sox and Yankees fans just get drunk and yell obscenities at a TV. Not much going on in the stands. The players do knock over old guys on occassion though when the benches clear.
5. Majority of college athletes don't play for money. Do they want money? Dumb question of course they do. But they play college because they love the game and want to get better to perhaps improve their chances of getting a bigger payday later on.
Not to mention the education you get out of it. You learn in college so that you can be better as a pro in whatever you choose to do later on.
4. Iowa was unranked. Penn State was #3. That was an upset. You're an idiot. BTW the Pac-1 isn't any better than the Big Ten. USC is good but why can't they beat the little guys? All the great teams do that. How does that not make USC look weak?
While we're on that people think USC shold play for a NC. They won't if OrSU wins out since they beat them. Finally USC won't be in the Rose Bowl.
3. Have you ever tailgated at an Iowa game? Have you ever tailgated at a decent college atmosphere before? College is where tailgating was invented.
Besides I can't even imagine the nasty things Packers fans do with their cheese heads before game time......sorry Megan.
2. The coach has to have control of the team. He has to earn the players' respect. Coach K did that. Don't be a blind deaf mute.
1. Wow you sound just like all the college supporters. To the state of Alabama football is religion.
A lot of schools have just as much tradition as the Yankees. Plus college football has been around just as long as the game of baseball has. 1869 was the first cfb game ever played.
And besides....the Yankees suck.
0. They had to love the game at some point before that to make it that far. Not sure how you could even survive college football without having some kind of love for the game. Your argument is weak sir. DISCREDIT!
College sports, specifically football (Hawkeyes/Badgers) unite well known parts of the country like Madison with cites like Iowa City that would otherwise just be a dot on the map. Go college sports.
The problem I have with collegiate sports is that the less popular sports like bowling are not provided enough financial support.
Lets talk about title 9? Professional sports provide entertainment for the people that want to watch them. C'mon, no body wants to watch women's softball, but because of title 9 people at the UW Madison are forced to give up men's baseball for it. Title 9 may be "fair" but it takes a lot away from college sports.
Megan you go through ten "opinions" of why you think that college sports are superior, but maybe you aren't entirely familiar with professional sports. Miracles of sport happen every week in professional sports. It is the college athletes that aspire to be part of something better... pro sports.
Iowa is pathetic, congrats you can farm well, get pro sports!
Tournaments. That is why pro sports will never have what college sports have. Tournaments are so much more exciting to watch than playoff series that drag on or even the NFL playoffs. And even as much as I hate the BCS, it has created week-to-week excite in college football.
College sports all the way! And that's coming from someone who wants to work in pro sports.
thanks for the reminder gohawks87, didn't I see that two of your fav teams are the wisconsin basketball badgers and the iowa football hawkeyes? what's up with that!? you would think college fans are better, but looking at fans like megan who cheers for different sports from different schools vs. packer fans who would eat you for even being from chicago kinda points the loyalty needle towards pro fans.
Badger1765 needs to come to a reality about iowa sports. True, we dont have a pro football team, but college sports are are 50 times better than pro sports, so we dont need them. Besides, its been pretty comfortable down here watching the hawkeyes hand it to the badgers the majority of the last 6 years. Hawkeyes are on the up and up, while the badgers are slipping, so get used to it.
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