SPEED. First off, the pro game is much faster. There aren’t as many slow, white assholes clogging up the field this go-round. All that juking and jiving you did junior year? That won’t fool pros such as Brian Urlacher. In fact, it’s far more likely to piss them off, causing them to drive you into the ground, shredding vital internal tissue in the process. So get speedier. I suggest taking diuretics prior to game time. They really help dial up the urgency.
EQUIPMENT. This is most pronounced in baseball, where your aluminum bat will be replaced with a wooden bat (Note: Eighty-five percent of all incoming baseball players nickname their bat Wonderboy, until their first strikeout). The reason for this change is twofold. First off, wooden bats are less likely to injure pitchers. Given that pitchers can shatter your orbital socket with a 95-mile-per-hour heater any time they wish, this seems kind of unfair. You should be able to retaliate by nailing them dead center in the chest with a death-rope line drive. Alas, you’ll just have to settle for seeing them jut out their glove to block the ball rocketing off your bat, and cowering in fear like little pussies.
The other reason wooden bats replace aluminum in the majors is for sound design. Aluminum bats go PING! Wooden bats go CRACK! PING! is kind of a weak sound. Almost fey. CRACK! is far manlier. It connotes the breaking of things, and that is sweet. Ask any major leaguer: CRACK! beats PING! every time. Especially if you’re the late Steve Howe.
SCHEDULE. College schedules are notoriously padded with any number of cupcake opponents. Your Prairie View A&Ms, your SUNY-Buffalos, your Notre Dames, and your Lower Duluth Amateur Pornographer Film Scoring Institutes. Those were gimme games. Oh, sure, your college coach always told you, “Be careful of Vanderbilt! They’ll sneak up on you! That number sixteen is an absolute dragon!” But that was all a load of shit. He knew they sucked, and so did you. Don’t expect any opponent to come in and just lie down for you at this level. Unless, of course, you’re playing the Knicks.
In fact, you not only face tougher, faster opponents at every encounter on the pro level, but you also have to play them more times. Pro schedules are considerably longer than college schedules, and that’s not even counting the playoffs. There’s going to be a lot of wear and tear on your body, no matter how many free deep-tissue massages and scented hot tub aromatherapies you may receive. Rookies are often said to hit what is known as a “rookie wall.” This occurs when you have played the number of pro games that would constitute a full college season, only to realize you still have fifty games left to go. This is often followed by a five-minute audible groan.
The one saving grace? You don’t have to attend any college classes. Not that you did before anyway, but at least now you don’t have to keep up the facade of attending class and pretend you care about how the Revolutionary War ended. That can be pretty exhausting.
RULES. Pro sports often differ from the college game in terms of rules and / or timekeeping. There are some obvious ones. In the NBA, the three-point line is a couple extra feet from the basket. In the NFL, receivers must have both feet inbounds for a legal catch. And the PGA Tour forbids players from having any goddamn sense of humor whatsoever. Everyone knows that.
But there are some additional rule differences you may not be aware of. For instance: in Major League Baseball, it is, in fact, perfectly legal to run the base paths with the tip of your penis just barely sticking out above the waistband of your game pants. If any girls notice this, you are awarded an extra base. The NFL forbids the use of geese to distract punt returners but allows group masturbation in any bench area Cool Zone. And while hand-checking is illegal in the NBA, tickling is not. Also, were you a cross-country runner in college? You’ll notice that professional cross-country running has no rules, because there is no such thing as professional cross-country running. Next time, pick a real sport, instead of gallivanting through the woods like a goddamn idiot.
Grizzled or nongrizzled? What kind of pro athlete are you?