9 Reasons Why College Basketball Is Better Than The NBA

9 reasons college basketball is better than the NBA

By: CHRIS CHASE, USA Today 4 hours ago

There is no comparison between college basketball and the pros. It’d be like pitting ice cream against kelp, Seinfeld against The Single Guy or everything to soccer. Why is college basketball better, you ask? “Because it is,” would have been enough to answer that question, but if it’s reasons you want, then it’s reasons you shall get.

1. The regular season means something.

Last night’s Duke-UNC game will have little effect on the seasons of either team. It might change seeding in the ACC tournament and give Coach K one more win over Good Ol’ Roy, but ultimately it’s meaningless. Except that it’s not. That game is one Duke, Carolina and all college basketball fans will remember forever, like the Jeff Capel buzzer beater in 2005 or Notre Dame snapping UCLA’s win streak in 1974. What’s the last classic NBA game you remember

Every fan of a basketball school has a great regular season memory: Mine was when Chris Paul and Eric Williams helped Wake Forest beat Raymond Felton, Sean May and UNC in a triple-overtime classic in 2003. Every Maryland fan still cringes at the thought of Duke coming back from 10 down with one minute to play back in 2001. Louisville fans can name every win over Kentucky and Kentucky fans can reminisce about the good times against Louisville.

The regular season might not have larger implications for the tournament, but every game matters because every game is a potential classic you’ll be talking about with your friends for years to come. Contrast that with the NBA, in which the regular season is truly meaningless and unless Kobe drops 81, games are quickly forgotten. Speaking of the NBA regular season…

2. The NBA’s schedule is way too long.

82 games? 82 GAMES? Who wants to watch something 82 times. This isn’t baseball, where the long season separates the contenders from the pretenders. This is a money-making scheme, plain and simple, since mediocre teams that have awful regular seasons are playing in the postseason all the time. 82 games. It’s insane. Who wants to watch something 82 times. Shoot, I haven’t watched Die Hard 82 times!

From the start of the NBA season to the end, is about 7 months, 18 days. Hasn’t Adam Silver gotten the memo that less is more these days? That’s why Game of Thrones runs for 13 weeks and Mad Men ends its run with seven episodes and those tricky Girl Scouts are making their Thin Mint packages smaller and smaller as if I wouldn’t notice. (I’m onto you, next-door neighbor whose name I often confuse with my other next-door neighbor.)

3. The existence of tanking.

I don’t think tanking is the great sin that many do. If the lottery system is set up for tanking and the season is going to be interminably long, a team would be stupid not to tank. The short-term loss of fans will be made up for if/when the teams gets good thanks to tanking. But college basketball teams never tank. The thrill of the upset is omnipresent. No one cares if the Knicks beat the [whoever’s the best team in the West], but when Kentucky’s undefeated season is ended by Mississippi State, that’s history, brotha.

4. The NBA is a player’s league and that’s not good for business.

Say what you will about TV money and the NCAA profiting of college athletes and it’ll be true and a problem that needs to be solved. But the NBA uses coaches like the NCAA uses players. Pro basketball features millionaires allergic to defense playing a game on a court they have long outgrown, all with the knowledge that they can get their coach fired with one sound bite.

NBA players are way too powerful and are among the folks who should least be allowed to wield that least power. It’s like giving a seven-year old a credit card or my wife the remote. Because of his free agency, Kevin Love could control the next few NBA seasons based on something as trivial as whether LeBron remembers his birthday. (You didn’t pitch on the cake? See ya, I’m off to Hollywood.) If the Cavs coach gives LeBron the stinkeye, it could lead to a firing, John Calipari going to Cleveland, and a total upheaval in the basketball world.

5. Kobe.


You can have him and not just because he would have gone to Duke.

6. The NCAA tournament is the greatest event in sports. The NBA playoffs last slightly longer than a trip to Mars.

The NBA playoffs are entirely fair and just. Unlike every other major American professional sports, the best team usually wins. Bully for the NBA. Save us two months and just crown the team with best record champion.

Meanwhile, the opening days of the NCAA tournament are a national holiday. Upsets, completely rare in the NBA, are common. Unpredictability is the order of the day. 32 games in two days, 48 games in four. It’s entirely a crapshoot, which is why the person who knows the least about college basketball always seem to win your pool. The tourney is basketball nirvana, much like a random Tuesday in April when you can either watch the Raptors and Hornets first-round game on NBATV or get crazy and catch Portland vs. Houston on TNT. The NBA: It’s fantastic!

7. Former college players are attached to their schools for life.

Chris Paul and his son, Chris Paul II, will always be revered at Wake Forest. (AP)
Chris Paul and his son, Chris Paul II, will always be revered at Wake Forest. (AP)
Nothing against capitalism here, but the NBA is such a transient league that players often move teams multiple times throughout their careers. Some greats stay in one place forever — Jordan, Magic, Larry, Isiah, Dirk, Kobe, Reggie, Stockton, Malone, Robinson, Duncan and Parker come to mind, but they’re the exceptions, not the rules.

In the NCAA, Shaq can always go back to LSU and be treated as a conquering hero. Kevin Durant can show up to a Texas game and, even though he only stayed one year, he’ll get a standing ovation every time he’s on the Jumbotron. But where will Chris Paul be feted when his pro career is done: New Orleans or Los Angeles? No matter, he’ll always have a home in Winston-Salem. The NBA is a business and so is the NCAA; but at least NCAA teams will always embrace former players.

8. Forty minute games vs. 48 minute games.

You know what 82 games multiplied by 48 minutes is? A waste of your time. (It’s 3,936, if you were wondering.) An average NCAA team plays around 34 games at 40 minutes a pop. That’s 1,360 minutes, almost one-third of the time you’d need to dedicate toward watching NBA players trudge through a back-to-back.

9. Passion
No NBA game this season, playoffs or not, will have 1/10th the passion of what we saw Wednesday night at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Flipping from Duke-Carolina to an NBA game is like going from watching downhill skiing to watch paint dry, and not just any paint, the most boring paint in the Benjamin Moore wheel.

It’s not even a contest. The best players in the world play in the NBA, but the best isn’t always more entertaining to watch, particularly in a league with the NBA’s structure. Give me college basketball every day of the week and twice on Big Monday. If you want the NBA, hey, it’s cheaper than Ambien.