I should add that it isn’t just the NFL that’s changed its approach to the draft- the media have changed too, just a bit more slowly.
Today, there’s extensive draft coverage in all media outlets. So, the ESPN reporters covering this year’s draft will know something about every player who gets drafted. The media won’t be caught flat-footed, and neither will most knowledgeable fans.
But back in 1979, practically nobody in New York knew who Phil Simms was. Oh, every General Manager in the NFL knew who Simms was, and they all regarded him as an excellent draft pick… but the New York media and fans had no idea who this guy was, had never heard of Morehead State, and were inclined to think the Giants had wasted their top pick on another Rocky Thompson.
Again, NFL insiders knew how good Simms was, and the Giants’ front office knew how good he was. But fans and reporters regarded the Simms pick as a surprise, even if insiders didn’t.
Today, of course, fans and reporters would know ALL about EVERY quarterback in the draft. A star quarterback at Morehead State would not be an unknown today.
I’ve asked around on this subject before but never quite understood, here may be a good opportunity to ask.
In the UK we don’t have any analogy to the draft at all so this is very alien to us. There is no college “feeder” system but rather a free market and free choice (providing an individual is actually wanted)
You make it sound like all your pro players come from the universtities and that they have to take part in this “draft”. Is that the case? Is that not a restriction on employment?
What is to stop a very good college player dropping out and approaching a top side as a private individual?
When the Jags Raider-esquely picked Matt Jones 1st in 2005, a QB they tried to turn into a WR. I think he was picked due to his 40 time and vertical jump.
Smith v. Professional Football. It’s a long, actually quite fascinating, legal opinion about the NFL draft (especially the concurrence/dissent). Yazoo Smith was a defensive back for the Oregon Ducks who got drafted in the first round of the draft, but injured his neck and retired from football. In 1970, he sued the NFL claiming the NFL draft was a “restraint on trade”, and violated the Sherman Anti-trust Act. And he won, at the trial level. The NFL appealled.
The appellate court found that the NFL draft wasn’t, per se, illegal, but that it was a unreasonable restraint. Without delving too far into the legal issues, the court found that the draft wasn’t a traditional “group boycott” (no team could sign a guy drafted by another tearm) because it is limited to the first contract of the player and it serves the purposes of competitive balance and collective bargaining.
The court then decided that it was, however, an unreasonable restraint on trade under the legal doctrine of “rule of reason” (that part is what the dissent disagreed with, the judge thought it was reasonable). They said:
“The draft that has been challenged here is undeniably anticompetitive both in its purpose and in its effect. The defendants have conceded that the draft “restricts competition among the NFL clubs for the services of graduating college players” and, indeed, that the draft “is designed to limit competition” and “to be a `purposive’ restraint” on the player-service market.[47] The fact that the draft assertedly was designed to promote the teams’ playing-field equality rather than to inflate their profit margins may prevent the draft’s purpose from being described, in subjective terms, as nefarious. But this fact does not prevent its purpose from being described, in objective terms, as anticompetitive, for suppressing competition, is the telos, the very essence of the restraint.”
The dissent said:
“In sum, I conclude, because of the unique nature of NFL football and the historical reasons that led to the inauguration of the draft, that the 1968 NFL college player draft is not unlawful under the antitrust laws. While graduating players are generally required—with exceptions—to sign with the team that drafts them, the teams by the nature of the game and the draft are also practically restricted to signing the players they have drafted, or else suffer the loss of very valuable draft choices. Also, in actual practice the draft allows players considerable mobility. Other considerations, discussed above, also indicate that the bargaining positions of graduating players, who are represented by agents in a great many instances, are not hampered. For these reasons, I believe that the draft is within the Rule of Reason as outlined in Engineers.”
So, the NFL Draft (as it was run in 1968), was illegal. While the Smith case was weaving it’s way through the courts, the NFL realized it might have a huge problem on it’s hands. It took advantage of an exception in anti-trust law that allows for some restraints on trade if they are a part of a collective bargaining agreement. So the NFL added the restrictions of the NFL draft into the collective bargaining agreement with the players union. So, while the NFL Draft as run in 1968 was illegal, now, because the players union agreed with it, it’s kosher.
Once again, the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Since the NFLPA has agreed with the NFL about the structure and rules of the draft, it’s legally kosher (I’m really glossing over a lot of boring crap here though). And one of those rules is that the teams agree not to sign any non-union players, which would include your hypothetical.
Well one slight tweak to that - football players become eligible for the draft 2 1/2 years after they graduate high school. They don’t have to be at a college program, but most are because it is the only way to prove they are up to playing against/with other top ranked players. They do have to register for the draft, and also have to sign with an agent before the draft.
Following the draft, all non-drafted players become free agents and can sign a rookie contract with any team. While some of these players do go on to very successful careers, they are obviously not rated as “top players” at the time of the draft or they would have been drafted.
Occasionally, a high draft choice will refuse to sign with the team that drafts them. John Elway, for example was drafted #1 by the Colts, but forced them to trade him to Denver. However, if the Colts had decided to stand firm, they would have retained his rights until the next draft, and Elway would have lost a year’s worth of pay.
Just to add that, while it doesn’t happen often, players have occasionally been able to engineer ways to avoid playing for the team which drafted them. Note that this usually only works if you’ve a very high draft choice – a guy picked in the fourth round is likely stuck.
John Elway was the first overall pick of the 1983 draft, by the (then) Baltimore Colts. He didn’t want to play for the Colts, which were a bad team, with a controversial coach. Elway was also a baseball prospect, and used the threat of playing baseball instead to get the Colts to trade his rights to the Denver Broncos.
Eli Manning was the first overall pick of the 2004 draft, by the San Diego Chargers, despite the fact that Manning (and his father, Archie Manning, a former NFL quarterback himself) had publicly stated that he did not want to play for the Chargers. However, the Chargers had apparently already engineered a deal to trade Manning to the New York Giants.
I believe that, in theory, a drafted player could elect to not sign with the team that drafted him, and re-enter the draft the following year. But, there’s always the risk that you’ll wind up in an even less desirable position (sitting out a year doesn’t look good to many teams), and you’re also passing up a year of income. I’m not sure that any noteworthy players have ever done this.
It happens in the baseball draft all the time; usually it’s a high school player who wants to play in college (or chooses to when he sees he’s not getting drafted high enough to earn a significant amount of money right away), but J. D. Drew did it to get a bigger signing bonus (which I believe he got, in the end).
Shawn Bradley was a bust, certainly, but nobody was surprised that he was drafted second overall. MOST of the draft analysts expected him to be one of the first few players drafted- several predicted he’d be the first overall pick, period.
Sure, a year BEFORE the draft, MANY fans and reporters would have said, “Shawn WHO?” But by draft day, he was well-known, and almost everyone expected him to be a high draft pick (even if they weren’t sure that he deserved to be).
Slight departure from the main topic… has anyone besides Eric Swann been taken in the first round of the NFL draft without playing college football?
Swann was a very good defensive lineman for a semi-pro team at the time he was drafted by the Cardinals. I can’t think of anyone else whos been drafted so high that wasn’t in college at the time.
The only recent example I can think of was Eric Swann, a defensive lineman who didn’t attend college, due to academic ineligibility. He played for a semi-pro team until he was eligible for the draft (and was drafted in the first round by the Cardinals in 1991).
It’s very rare for a player to make the NFL at all without playing in college, much less being drafted in the first round.
Otis Sistrunk (a defensive lineman for the Raiders in the 1970s) never attended college. He joined the Marines after high school, then played semi-pro ball for a few years before signing with the Raiders. The joke was that his alma mater was the University of Mars.
The only other modern-day examples I can think of were placekickers; in the 1960s and 1970s, when soccer-style kicking took over the NFL, many teams signed soccer players from other countries to kick, many of whom had not played football previously, or attended college. Some examples of this were Garo Yepremian (Cyprus), and Toni Fritsch (Austria). But, again, not draft choices (much less first rounders).
Back in the inglorious days of the 1980s-era St. Louis Cardinals, the team used to surprise people regularly with their draft picks. Among the most notorious was Clyde “the Glide” Duncan, a wide receiver from Tennessee. A first-round pick, he ended up playing a total of 19 games over two seasons, with four receptions for a total of 39 yards.
Then there was the case of quarterback Kelly Stauffer. It wasn’t that Stauffer wasn’t draft material (maybe not first-round material, but a QB is always a risky pick), but he had made it clear before the draft that he didn’t want to be drafted by St. Louis, and wouldn’t sign with St. Louis. Undetered, the Cardinals used the #6 pick in the first round to draft him. Stauffer was a man of his word and refused to even talk to the Cardinals. He sat out the entire season. The day before the Cardinals lost their rights to Stauffer, they traded him to Seattle (IIRC, they got something like a 7th round pick in return.) Stauffer happily signed with the Seahawks and played for four seasons.
Thanks for jogging my memory on Stouffer (here’s his stat record on Pro Football Reference). He never played particularly well for the Seahawks, seeming to confirm that he, indeed, was another one of those stretch picks for the Cardinals.
It wasn’t so much that Heyward-Bey went too early (though he did). It’s that he went before Michael Crabtree, who did everything better than Heyward-Bey except run fast (and wasn’t slow).
Along a similar line, everyone was absolutely stunned when the Lions drafted wideout Mike Williams 10th overall in 2005. It wasn’t because he wasn’t expected to go that high; it was because the Lions had used their 2003 and 2004 first round picks on wideouts Charles Rodgers and Roy Williams, and both looked like future stars already.
In 2003 the Vikings let their clock run out, caught up in a tangled mess of trades. The Jaguars and Panthers swooped in and made their picks before the Vikings could recover and get in their pick. It really sped up that draft. Mel Kiper had some harsh words about the Vikings after that.
May I infer that if the NFL now proceeds with the draft without a collective bargaining agreement in place that they might again be in violation of anti-trust/restraint of trade laws?
The Dolphins taking Ted Ginn at #9 in 2007 was a pretty huge surprise. I think Brady Quinn practically had his Dolphins uniform number picked out when that pick was announced. Cam Cameron had tough time explaining that one.
As for players picking and choosing their destinations, who could forget Bernie Kosar’s wild draft experience. Here is a pretty good summary.
That’s a good question. Through all of the negotiations, the NFL has continued to note that the draft would go on as scheduled (though the rest of the “NFL year” is in limbo, pending what happens in court).
I think (though I may well be wrong) that the draft is still OK as long as the NFL doesn’t lose its anti-trust exemption (which the players are currently in court to attempt to have stripped).
At any rate, without a CBA in place, even if the teams do draft players, I don’t think that they can have any conversations with those players, or sign them to contracts. (An interesting question – can a representative from the drafting team even pose for a picture with the team’s draftee at the draft?)
