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The Cleveland Browns are a bad football team. The Ohio State Buckeyes are a very good one. But could one of the best college football teams really compete with one of the worst in the NFL?<\/p>\n
Fans seem to think so. \u00a0A Public Policy Polling survey\u00a0released last\u00a0week reveals that 62 percent of respondents believe Ohio State would beat the Browns.<\/p>\n
The Browns are 0-5\u00a0this season after getting blown out by New England on\u00a0Sunday in Tom Brady\u2019s return to the Patriots. In all, Cleveland\u00a0has been outscored 148-87.\u00a0The Buckeyes, meanwhile, are the No. 2 ranked college team in the country after a 5-0 start\u2014\u00a0three of those victories were by 45 points or more.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But what about the hypothetical matchup? Would the Buckeyes really have a shot at beating their in-state professional counterparts?<\/p>\n
No. Not a chance.<\/p>\n
Consider: There are 128 college Football Bowl Subdivision (college football\u2019s top level) programs competing today. These teams are allotted 85 scholarship positions, all of which are\u00a0generally used. That\u2019s 11,000 players. Add in your walk-ons and players on academic scholarships, and you\u2019ve got as many as 15,000 players competing at the highest level of college football.<\/p>\n
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The NFL draft has as many as 256 players drafted each year\u2014or\u00a01,024 over a four-year span\u2014and that\u2019s out of a pool of at least 15,000, as many others from non-FBS schools declare for the draft. This leaves just under 7 percent of college players being selected in the NFL draft according to\u00a0our napkin math;\u00a0bump it up to a little over 9 percent if you discount non-scholarship players. The actual percent drafted likely is even lower\u2014and not all drafted players make the NFL.<\/p>\n
NFL rosters, meanwhile, are in the ballpark of 65 players: 53 active, 10 practice squad, and a varying handful on injured reserve. There are 32 teams in the NFL, meaning somewhere around 2,080 players are in the league in any given year.<\/p>\n
There are 15,000 in college and around 2,100 in the pros. Meaning, on the whole, the talent level in the NFL is more than seven times greater<\/em> than that of college. Clearly, not all teams are created equal, however, as Ohio State\u2019s 85 are going to be considerably better than, say, Louisiana-Monroe\u2019s roster, so the math is a bit exaggerated.<\/p>\n Still, the talent jump is dramatic, as only the biggest, fastest, and\/or most talented college players make the pros. So the \u201cworst\u201d player on a pro team would have been a big contributor, at the least, on his college team. But how\/where do these talent differences manifest?<\/p>\n In the trenches.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you matchup the interior lines (of college teams) against regular NFL teams on either side of the ball, it wouldn\u2019t even be close,\u201d Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, who also led one of college football\u2019s top programs at USC,\u00a0told PFT. \u201cIt\u2019s not the receivers. It\u2019s not the running backs. It\u2019s what would happen up front that would be tremendously shocking to a college team.\u201d<\/p>\n When you matchup the interior lines (of college teams) against regular NFL teams … it wouldn\u2019t even be close.<\/p>\n These matchups don\u2019t happen in football, but they used to, sort of. Starting in 1934, a\u00a0team of college football all-stars played against the reigning league champions each year. In the early days of the game, the college players\u00a0actually won some of the matchups (their final record was 9-31-2).<\/p>\n Of course, there might be\u00a0explanations other than a straight-up better-played game.<\/p>\n \u201cThe game must be one that truly has something at stake, not an exhibition like the old College All-Stars vs. Defending NFL Champions that were played in Chicago,\u201d former college standout and current NFL analyst Charles Davis\u00a0told NFL.com. \u201cThe college kids occasionally won that game as the vets rarely took it seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n And as professional football matured, the games generally became less competitive. Participation issues and insurance costs played parts in the series ending\u00a0after the 1976 game.\u00a0The debate isn\u2019t limited to football, however, as Davis\u2019\u00a0point is applicable to the famed 1992 Olympic Dream Team, comprised of 11 NBA superstars. And Christian Laettner.<\/p>\n As a warm up to the Barcelona Games, Team USA faced off against a group of college all-stars\u2014and lost. Some players admitted to taking their younger opponents for granted, though it would come out later that coach Chuck Daly, through substitution choices and lack of coaching, essentially\u00a0threw the game to teach his star-laden team a lesson.<\/p>\n Retired NBA star Grant Hill, who was on that college all-star team, claims his side won fair and square. \u201cI\u2019m not buying it,\u201d Hill said of the idea that the game was fixed. Either way, the Dream Team took the lesson to heart. \u201cThe next day, we couldn\u2019t get the ball over half court,\u201d\u00a0Hill said.<\/p>\n The collegiate vs. pro\u00a0question also is posed around whether college basketball\u2019s best could beat not an Olympic team, but your standard\u2014or awful, really\u2014NBA team. And while CBS Sports\u2019 Sam Vecenie made an interesting argument how, at one specific point in time a couple years ago, the University of Kentucky\u00a0might have had a chance against the abysmal Philadelphia 76ers, he doesn\u2019t believe the upset could actually happen. For his part, Kentucky coach John Calipari\u2014who has coached in the NBA\u2014thinks the notion of his squad defeating an NBA team is absurd.<\/p>\n Perhaps the only sport where the question has some validity is baseball. Major League Baseball teams regularly play against college teams during the MLB preseason, and the college teams sometimes win these games. But MLB teams rarely play their starters for more than a few innings\u2014if they play them at all\u2014in many preseason games. Still, The Wall Street Journal\u00a0<\/em>reports that MLB teams went\u00a063-3-1 against college teams between 2006 and 2014,\u00a0though Division II University of Tampa\u00a0knocked off the Philadelphia Phillies during spring training in 2015.<\/p>\n Was the loss just an anomaly? Well, that season, the Phillies went 63-99,\u00a0good for the worst record in all of baseball.\u00a0<\/p>\n But it was just an exhibition. And maybe in a similar scenario, Ohio State could hang with the Cleveland Browns. If the pros were taking the game seriously, however …<\/p>\n \u201c(The NFL is) about: I\u2019ma line up and beat you one-on-one,\u201d said San Diego Chargers linebacker Manti Te\u2019o, who played for Notre Dame in college and is perhaps best\u00a0known outside football for his bizarre fake girlfriend saga. \u201cYou put those college schemes in front of a group of guys who can just dominate one-on-one matchups all the time?<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not gonna work, bro.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Embed from Getty Images \u00a0 \u00a0 The Cleveland Browns are a bad football team. The Ohio State Buckeyes are a very good one. But could one of the best college football teams really compete with one of the worst in the NFL? Fans seem to think so. \u00a0A Public Policy Polling survey\u00a0released last\u00a0week reveals that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}