It is officially basketball season, and the NBA and college basketball are in full swing. It’s the time of year when basketball momentarily allows you to forget about the frigid weather outside.
One trend I have noticed during this season’s arrival is the more I watch college basketball the less I enjoy the NBA. I have always tried to maintain an even allegiance to both stages, but I have officially come to the conclusion that college basketball is flat out better than professional basketball.
One of the most evident aspects of college basketball that will always be better than the professionals are the fans. College basketball fans are insane. You can almost feel and hear the roar of the fans through the television, dressed up in costumes that have zero relevance to anything. Whether it’s 2,000 crazy student fans chanting in unity or a fan stripped down to his underwear to distract the opposing free throw shooter, you simply don’t get that type of energy and enthusiasm from a professional fan base.
Thanks to these crazy fans, college basketball has some of the best rivalries in sports. North Carolina fans wait hours in line for the chance to snag tickets to the hallowed Duke-NC game, one of the greatest rivalries of all time. There is a borderline outrageous amount of hate for rival schools, merely because they are your rival. There is an unparalleled amount of passion that goes into such games, as students, alumni and communities rally around their prospective teams. I’ve never seen anyone wait in line for hours to get into a Milwaukee Bucks game.
Next, the competition is much tighter at the collegiate level. Any team has the ability to succeed, as we have seen in recent years with Butler, VCU and Wichita State. Teams that can’t even come close to matching the recruiting capabilities of most top schools can make appearances in the Final Four. There are intriguing matchups on a daily basis because of the stiff competition and the non-conference matchups early on provide an exciting foreshadow as to what the season will have in store.
If not for the competition, fans or rivalries, college basketball is unmatched simply because of the best month of the year, March. Yes, March Madness is the best sports phenomenon to happen every year. A select group of schools, including powerhouses and underdogs, play their hearts out for a chance to hold that gold ball in April. Fans get to see fairytale teams defy the sports world year in and year out, while they suddenly are a devoted fan of 32 teams in hope that it will be the year that they win their bracket pool. The NBA playoffs can be exciting, but nowhere near the caliber of excitement that accompanies March Madness.
The traditions and excitement that college basketball supplies are unmatched by the NBA. The talent at the professional level in unbelievable, but it’s not the players that make college basketball so amazing. It’s the constant uncertainty of what teams can emerge out of nowhere and pull of an upset at any point in time. It’s the passion and vigor that every fan puts behind their team.
Yes, college basketball is the best.
Blake is also the beat writer for the men’s basketball team. Let him know how you feel about college basketball by emailing bwduffin@wisc.edu.
