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There’s nothing sports fans love more than arguing about hypothetical scenarios that will never actually unfold in real life; we could mercifully end the “Jordan vs. LeBron” debate if there was a way to see how they’d fare against each other in their primes, but that’s sadly never going to happen.
There’s also another thought experiment that’s all the rage with football fans who’ve spent years going back and forth about who would reign supreme if the best team in college football got the chance to face off against the worst team in the NFL.
That’s yet another scenario that will almost certainly never actually unfold despite the eyeballs it would undoubtedly attract, although it’s safe to assume a team comprised entirely of professional football players who successfully made the leap from the NCAA wouldn’t have a lot of trouble dealing with even the most formidable squad college football has to offer.
With that said, we were once treated to a minor twist on that theoretical matchup thanks to the “Chicago College All-Star Game,” which was held on an annual basis between 1934 and 1976 and essentially proved one side had a very, very large advantage.
College players had a lot of trouble holding their own against NFL teams back in the day
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The Chicago College All-Star Game was the brainchild of Arch Ward, an editor at the Chicago Tribune who is widely credited for inventing the format when he organized the inaugural MLB All-Star Game in 1933.
Ward decided to expand his horizons a bit after that first contest resonated with baseball fans, and while similar football events existed at the time, Ward raised the stakes a bit by organizing a contest that featured the best college players in the country facing off against the defending NFL champions.
The first All-Star Game was held at Soldier Field on August 31, 1934, where 79,432 spectators watch the college team and the Chicago Bears grind each other down in a defensive battle that ended in a 0-0 tie.
The Bears walked away with a win the following year before the Lions and the All-Stars tied once again, and for a brief moment, the latter actually had an edge in the all-time series thanks to two consecutive wins in 1937 and 1938.
However, that wasn’t the case for very long.
The NFL ultimately rattled off five consecutive victories before the All-Stars added another tally to the Win column in 1943, but the tides had firmly turned by that point.
It’s worth noting the pros had a few fairly obvious edges over their opponents, who were essentially a ragtag group of college players who didn’t have the luxury of spending an entire season practicing together while developing the kind of chemistry you’d find on an NFL team that had recently secured a championship.
It also doesn’t seem like a lot of guys representing the league took the games that seriously based on what one member of the Dolphins had to say after Miami won by a score of 14-3 in 1973.
The format led to multiple blowouts (the Eagles and the Packers tied for the record for the biggest margin of victory thanks to the 38-0 routs they respectively pulled off in 1949 and 1966), and while the College All-Stars were able to rack up nine wins by the time the game was held for the final time in 1976, their all-time record of 9-32-2 is a testament to the lopsided nature of the series.