Best college football team vs. worst NFL team: Who will win the contest if both sides square off for a single game?
Who wins in a matchup between the best college football team and the worst NFL team? Over the years, fans and analysts alike have debated the question for hours, but there never seems to be a clear-cut answer.
So let's take a detailed look at what happens when the best college football team takes on the worst NFL organization.
To start, let's take a look at the contenders. The best CFB program last season was easily the Georgia Bulldogs. The Bulldogs won the national championship en route to an undefeated season which saw them go 15-0.
On the other hand, the worst NFL squad last season was the Chicago Bears. The Bears went 3-14 as they recorded the worst record in the NFL. Now that we have our contenders, how would the match finally play out?
To put it nicely, the NFL franchises would comfortably wash out any collegiate football team. Even if one were to put up a squad of CFB All-Stars against some of the worst NFL clubs of the last decade, the major league rosters would easily dominate the game, owing heavily to players' physical dominance in professional football organizations.
While every great collegiate football team has highly skilled players, only the best players out of college ever get to step onto an NFL field.
A college program is bound to have a weakness at one position or another - perhaps a linebacker or a defensive end. NFL clubs will exploit every flaw to the fullest because that's just the sheer physical dominance of professional football players.
In short, an NFL team's physicality and growth as players far outweigh the skill and talent of any excellent college football program. That's why a game between the best college football team and the worst NFL team will almost always see the pros winning.
Has a college football team ever beaten an NFL team?
After all that we've said, you'd probably think there's no question about who would be the winner in a matchup between a college football team and an NFL club. But surprisingly, many NFL franchises have fallen short against their collegiate opponents in the past.
From 1934 to 1976, a team of college football All-Stars would take the field against the NFL champions from that year in a preseason game called the Chicago Charities College All-Star Game. Over the course of the 41 All-Star games, the NFL clubs maintained a winning record of 30-9-2 against the college All-Stars.
But that also means that the collegiate teams beat the NFL champions nine times, the last one being a 20-17 win by the all-stars against the Green Bay Packers in 1963. So how did college all-stars defeat NFL champions, let alone the worst NFL teams?
Many of those wins came in the early days of the All-Star game, when the NFL still implemented color barriers, allowing the college teams to field a lot more talent than their professional counterparts.
Even so, the professional NFL teams largely dominated the All-Star games before reluctance from NFL coaches due to injury concerns finally ended the game in 1976.
But in modern-day football, we're still fairly certain that an All-Star college football team has next to no chance of winning against the worst NFL team.