Last January in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, West Virginia’s senior fullback Owen Schmitt exemplified the passion that sets him, and most other college athletes, apart from millionaire professionals. Following West Virginia’s emotional BCS bowl victory over an Oklahoma squad that some experts claimed should have been in the national championship, Schmitt, a six-three, 250 lb beast, was unable to hold back tears during his post game interview.

On live television, just moments after sending the favored Oklahoma Sooners to its fifth straight bowl loss, Schmitt, donning a full-blown Mohawk, could not suppress his emotions and allowed the tears to flow. When the image of Schmitt’s tear-drenched face is juxtaposed with NFL wide receiver Randy Moss refusing to block on a running play or leaving the game field before time expires, a stark contrast between college and professional sports becomes apparent.

College athletes don’t play for advertising deals or large contracts. We don’t play for anything except ourselves, our teammates, and our collective quest to be champions. Student-athletes get nothing from victory except the personal and group satisfaction of success. (Compare that to Michael Phelps, who received a one million dollar bonus from Speedo for collecting eight gold medals in Beijing.) As college athletes we are able to remain unscathed by the effects of corporate sponsors, who bombard professional athletes with lucrative deals to endorse their products.

Professional sports in America turn many passionate young athletes into money-obsessed celebrities, people who are sometimes more concerned with their next contract than the next play. Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Ocho Cinco (formerly Chad Johnson) legally changed his last name to the Spanish equivalent of “eight, five—his jersey number—last week. Ocho Cinco is a prime example of a pro athlete who places himself in front of his team, the type of behavior that separates pros from college athletes. Ocho Cinco first received most of his national recognition after repeatedly getting himself and his team penalized for excessive and inappropriate celebrations following touchdowns. The NFL has since changed its sportsmanship rules to outlaw any excessive celebrations and to keep obnoxious and self-promoting revelry out of the league.

During the off-season in college sports, teammates spend countless hours together in the gym or on the track working together to reach the same goal: a championship. Nobody makes any more money than anybody else. Nobody is in his/her contract year. Athletes in college usually maintain the same childhood passion for their sports that pros sometimes appear to lose sight of when opulence and fame become their central focus.

As was exhibited in the 2008 USA Olympic Basketball team, when athletes spend a long time together working for one collective goal (in their case, the gold medal), unaffected by corporate or financial pressures, new levels of performance and competitiveness are possible. Just four years after the men’s American basketball team embarrassed itself to a bronze medal in Athens with a clear lack of cohesiveness in its players, the ’08 version of Team USA played together for over two years before Beijing, gaining valuable experience playing as a team. USA’s team-first attitude allowed it to cruise to a gold medal in the Olympics; while the Americans led the world in points scored per game (106.3), none of its players finished in the top eight of individual scorers, a statistic that epitomizes the unselfish play of USA basketball. For the first time in years, the all-star American basketball players competed solely for the thrill and honor of winning a gold medal for their country, with no ulterior financial motives.

The selfless play and cohesiveness of the 2008 USA basketball team is an anomaly amongst most professional squads, but is pervasive amongst college ones. It doesn’t matter if it’s the men’s football division one national championship game or the women’s badminton NESCAC final—tudent-athletes rarely lack an abundance of enthusiasm and selflessness. Without the insatiable lust for million dollar contracts and corporate endorsement deals that cloud the minds of professional athletes, college student-athletes epitomize what makes sports so great: passion and genuine love for the game, and the collaborative team effort to win a championship.