A couple of questions about the drafting of players

The Game Room
1

  1. If the upcoming NBA, NFL, etc. seasons are canceled, are they just going to run another Draft (in 2021) without having had a season in between? You would have two consecutive drafts, one in 2020 and one in 2021, with no regular season.

  2. I assume there is no drafting done in non-American sports leagues. Do they just scout the whole world for talent, and when they hear of some young Messi 2.0 athlete in suburban London or Santiago, Chile, they then offer him a contract? It’s a bidding war and a race to see who can find talent in the world, finders keepers?

2

Answer to Q1 – assuming that the teams drafting players this spring and summer sign them to contracts, then whether or not the upcoming seasons are played is more a matter of how the leagues decide to deal with those “contract years” are dealt with.

Yes, there certainly could be a case in which two consecutive drafts are held without an intervening season, as it’s also a matter of when a new crop of players become eligible for the next draft. However, if there’s no high school or college sports play this next year, that’ll make the next draft interesting, because it may impact which players are eligble, as well as not giving teams another season’s worth of performance with which to judge players. Would NFL teams be willing to draft players in the spring of 2021, who haven’t actually played football in a year and a half? I don’t know the answer to that.

3

NHL had a draft in 2005 after a lockout cancelled the season. They used a different format for that draft.

2005 NHL Entry Draft - Wikipedia

NHL and NBA drafts cover every country. Baseball draft only covers US and Canada and US territories such as Puerto Rico. NFL only rarely drafts outside the US but I think it covers every country.

4

For clarification, what I meant was how non-US sports leagues get their young players (leagues such as Bundesliga, Premier League, La Liga, etc.) They just sign talent where they find it?

5

I don’t think the Euro soccer leagues have drafts like the US. In the UK they have teams for kids that are affiliated with Premier league teams but I think other teams can sign those guys when they turn pro. For example David Beckham played for 4 different teams before he turned pro. They don’t have college soccer so they can turn pro at 18. A lot of Euro people think US college soccer is not the best system because the college coaches are focused on winning more than developing players.

6

There aren’t many soccer talents who are undiscovered at an early age. They’ll quickly get funneled to one academy or another. Yeah, the bigger clubs have the most resources for scouting these guys out. It’s a “doggy dog world,” as we jokingly call it on my sports board.

7

The Australian Football League has a draft.

8

College BB teams start recruiting players in 9th grade so around age 14. College FB recruiting starts around 10th grade age 15.

If a baseball player goes to college he cannot be drafted until he spends 3 years there , same as the NFL. Technically they don’t have to go to college , they need to be 3 years past HS. NBA requires 1 year past HS and many top BB guys now are skipping college BB. NHL drafts at age 18 but most guys don’t make it to the NHL for 2 or more years.

9

Define “recruiting.” Division I schools cannot make any sort of contact with a basketball player or their parents before the end of their sophomore year.