Stop me if you’ve heard this before: College basketball is so much more entertaining than the NBA. If you know someone like this in your life, immediately cut them off, these people are not your friends. They’re an unenlightened sports fan.

Put it like this, no one goes to collegiate theater programs in place of going to the movies. Nor does anyone go to a pre-med student over an actual doctor. There’s a reason why there’s a distinction between amateurs and professionals. College, by definition, is a time to further learn a craft and to understand how to become a professional. By its nature collegiate basketball is a lesser product than the NBA.

Every year the top high school seniors step onto a college campus and make an impact on their chosen team. This is all, for the most part, without learning how to actually play the game. College coaches are tasked with grooming their players for a  potential spot on an NBA roster. Many times that goal is sacrificed for the chance to win a collegiate championship. A clear example of this is when coaches at top programs elect to play a 2-3 zone defense instead of the traditional man-to-man. In the NBA, this defense is relatively obsolete. Players and coaches are all so talented that it makes it impossible for a team to use this as an effective strategy to prevent scoring. However, players on a college roster don’t all have the skill set or the discipline to exploit it. This means a team can employ a 2-3 and wreak havoc on the other team by using an inferior defense.

Last year, Duke, who made it to the Elite 8, switched to a 2-3 zone midseason and it changed their entire trajectory. They were a team with two lottery pick players in their starting lineup, yet they couldn’t play a lick of man-to-man defense. Instead of actually teaching the team how to play defense, Coach K decided to implement a zone and bank on other teams not being able to abuse it.

In the NBA there is no ability to hide on defense. The best players have to guard each other night after night. Even players that are perceived to play terrible defense, such as James Harden and Stephen Curry, are forced to be better than the average college player because there is no opportunity for them to be bailed out.

The largest argument for college basketball is that it’s more unpredictable than the NBA. It seems to feel like the same teams are in the FInals every year or that we know who will win the championship before the year starts. Let’s take a look at the NCAA though. In the last ten years here are the teams and how many times they’ve played in the title game; North Carolina: three, Kentucky, Duke, Connecticut, Villanova, Butler, Michigan, Kansas: two, Memphis, Louisville, Wisconsin and Gonzaga: one. Now if you also take into account that almost five times the amount of teams make the playoffs in college rather than the NBA it becomes apparent that there isn’t much parity there either.

Just because the March Madness tournament is one of the most exciting ideas in sports doesn’t make the product itself exciting. Once you take a look at the actual basketball being played, it’s evident that it’s an inferior output to the NBA. If after this you still want to watch close games and fundamental mistakes, be sure to also check out your local church youth rec league it’s not too far off.