Around this time of the year, as the basketball and football seasons in the professional and amateur worlds clash, the avid sports fan will usually naturally gravitate towards either collegiate sports or professional sports. While some pay attention and keep up with both, one will usually hold a preference for one or another, subconsciously or not. While professional sports have the best athletes in the world, something about the drive and passion to reach the next level makes the world of college athletics so much more watchable. 

When someone watches college basketball and the NBA, they see stark differences in the level of athleticism, the level of effort, and the level of intensity. Part of that is because of the difference in schedules. Each team in the NBA plays 82 games in a season, which is double the amount of games that a college team would usually play. This varies from team to team but usually sits around 35-40 games per season, making each game in the NCAA mean so much more.

The level of effort is significantly more intense at the collegiate level. Most of those athletes have already achieved their dreams of playing professionally. College players play with a chip on their shoulder, something to prove to the scouts, to the coaches, and to the executives at the highest level. They’re still chasing their dreams to reach the highest level. When you watch a college basketball game, the defense closely guards the players on and off the ball constantly. It is a battle every possession to get an open shot in a Power Four conference matchup. In the NBA, the defense is lax and gives up open shots on the majority of the possessions during a regular season game. 

In football, the level of athleticism is lower in college than in the NFL. The level of play is so good amongst the NFL teams, especially defensively, that it’s way harder to get big plays and score points against quality defenses in the NFL. The secondaries blow significantly less coverages in the NFL, the linebackers miss significantly less tackles, and the defensive linemen are all mammoths of men. But that’s what makes watching the games so much more fun at the collegiate level.

Nobody wants to watch a 13-10 defensive grudge match; they want to see the high-scoring, high-flying offenses get into a shootout. The offenses at the collegiate level are able to score more points per game and make more big plays than the NFL teams because the NFL athletes are so good at their jobs.

Lastly, the structure of the collegiate playoffs in basketball and football is much more chaotic than in the land of professional sports. Chaotic in the best way imaginable. The first and second rounds of March Madness each year contain a shock value that can’t be duplicated in professional sports. In the NBA, we consistently see the top seeds win the conference and the title; same for the NFL. There’s never a ton of drama. The new 12-team structure for the college football playoff provides an innovative, creative formula for the longstanding problem of the non-competitive, uninteresting playoffs that plagued the NCAA in the old four-team playoff format. While the top teams usually win in the College Football Playoff, the games are usually interesting, and with the new format, it should make for the most entertaining and competitive playoffs in college football’s storied history.