# So what if you don't register for the NFL draft? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [November 18, 2014, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987 "2014-11-18T18:56:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987/21 "2014-11-19T18:34:22Z")
> [@storyteller0910](#): > > If you are John Brown, why would you say “no?” Because of some arbitrary principle that says you should get to pick your own team? Even if that principle is true, who cares? John Brown’s interests are best served by entering the draft and going where he’s drafted… and he’s responsible first and foremost for his own welfare, and that of his family. Damn it people, that’s why democracy doesn’t work! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987/22 "2014-11-19T18:47:16Z")
> [@diku](#): > > Right, and a lot of those top five can’t miss prospects miss because they’re put on crappy teams at the top of the draft. Like the years that the Bengals were always terrible, always had high draft picks, picked can’t miss prospects, and ruined them. Same with the Titans here now. I don’t know that Jake Locker was can’t miss, but playing on a team with a bad line and bad receivers didn’t exactly help his career. > > I refer to the Bengals because of one player, David Klinger. Can’t miss coming out of college, set records in school, got stuck behind a horrible offensive line, and was sacked out of the league. Then we look at him as a bust. I totally understand why someone coming out wouldn’t want to play for those teams. David Klinger… very funny. :rolleyes: You know who else set every record in the book in college then did jack shit in the NFL? EVERY college QB who sets every record in the book! Remember how Colt Brennan, Timmy Chang, BJ Symons, and Colt McCoy tore up the NFL? Number one, QBs are the most risky, volatile players you can draft, even at the very top of the draft. Andrew Luck notwithstanding, there’s no such thing as a “can’t miss QB.” Number two, players with the skills to play in the NFL will transcend even the most awful teams. Number three, if you’re a decent enough player to stay in the league a few years and earn a 2nd contract, you’re a free agent and you go wherever the hell you want. The NFL, like all professional sports, is a near pure meritocracy; either you can hack it or you can’t. ---
**Author:** ![yellowjacketcoder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/4bbf92/32.png) [@yellowjacketcoder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yellowjacketcoder)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987/23 "2014-11-19T19:12:36Z")
> [@DCnDC](#): > > Number one, QBs are the most risky, volatile players you can draft, even at the very top of the draft. Andrew Luck notwithstanding, there’s no such thing as a “can’t miss QB.” Number two, players with the skills to play in the NFL will transcend even the most awful teams. Number three, if you’re a decent enough player to stay in the league a few years and earn a 2nd contract, you’re a free agent and you go wherever the hell you want. I agree with points one and three, but you can’t seriously think that a good player will transcend playing for an awful team. As a thought experiment, consider Peyton Manning and the Podunk Middle School Rascals vs. the New England Patriots. Manning may be an amazing QB, but the Rascals are going to get STOMPED every play. The difference between that scenario and putting Manning in with the Jacksonville Jaguars is simply one of degree - he’s going to lose the vast majority of those games because the team around him sucks. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987/24 "2014-11-19T19:24:39Z")
> [@yellowjacketcoder](#): > > I agree with points one and three, but you can’t seriously think that a good player will transcend playing for an awful team. > > As a thought experiment, consider Peyton Manning and the Podunk Middle School Rascals vs. the New England Patriots. Manning may be an amazing QB, but the Rascals are going to get STOMPED every play. The difference between that scenario and putting Manning in with the Jacksonville Jaguars is simply one of degree - he’s going to lose the vast majority of those games because the team around him sucks. That was not my point; I wasn’t saying a good player will instantly make an awful team great, that’s ludicrous. I was saying that an awful team will not ruin a truly NFL-worthy player, as **diku** ’s post implicated. For example, the only team to ever go 0-16 had Calvin Johnson, a top-5 NFL player since the day he set foot on an NFL field. And yet Calvin Johnson is still in the league. Playing on godawful teams did not prevent Barry Sanders, to stay with the Lions theme, from having a great career, making the Hall of Fame, and being considered one of the most transcendent players in the history of the league (okay, to be fair, the Lions during that period were not “godawful,” but rather somewhere between bad and fair to middling, but still…). ---
**Author:** ![yellowjacketcoder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/4bbf92/32.png) [@yellowjacketcoder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yellowjacketcoder)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987/25 "2014-11-19T19:34:04Z")
> [@DCnDC](#): > > That was not my point; I wasn’t saying a good player will instantly make an awful team great, that’s ludicrous. I was saying that an awful team will not ruin a truly NFL-worthy player, as **diku** ’s post implicated. > > For example, the only team to ever go 0-16 had Calvin Johnson, a top-5 NFL player since the day he set foot on an NFL field. And yet Calvin Johnson is still in the league. Playing on godawful teams did not prevent Barry Sanders, to stay with the Lions theme, from having a great career, making the Hall of Fame, and being considered one of the most transcendent players in the history of the league (okay, to be fair, the Lions during that period were not “godawful,” but rather somewhere between bad and fair to middling, but still…). Fair enough, you make a good point. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987/26 "2014-11-19T19:41:34Z")
> [@Hamlet](#): > > If I misremember, please correct me, but IIRC in some other threads about the NFL, you seem to advocate the NFL be forced to open itself to all members, that it no longer have a draft, and that players get to choose where, and for how much, they get to play. > > I would suggest that such a plan would lead inevitably to a drop off in the quality of play due to the dilution of talent, many more lobsided victories as the Dallas Cowboys simply demolish the Des Moines Insurance Adjusters, a complete lack of parity in the league where the richest teams can buy all the talent they want, many more failed franchises that exploit an area to get public funds for a team and then fold in a year or two, and professional football would become the butt of late night jokes. > > Yes, the NFL draft limits a players ability to play wherever and for whatever they want. Yes, the owners are more interested in making money than serving their fans (which is true for almost every business in the world). Yes, limiting the people who can own franchises keeps out other potential owners. But those things are also responsible for the parity the league enjoys, the high level of play most of the time, and the overall success of NFL football. Scrapping it all to chase a concept of fairness to everyone, while admirable, would destroy it. You remember correctly. I’m not the least bit interested in the success of the NFL nor the entertainment of football fans. I’m hoping that in 20 years the last vestiges of the game will feature a truly national pyramid of 7-on-7 teams. ---
**Author:** ![Hamlet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hamlet/32/2818_2.png) [@Hamlet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamlet)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987/27 "2014-11-19T19:44:16Z")
> [@Red\_Wiggler](#): > > You remember correctly. I’m not the least bit interested in the success of the NFL nor the entertainment of football fans. I’m hoping that in 20 years the last vestiges of the game will feature a truly national pyramid of 7-on-7 teams. Alrighty then. As long as we understand where you’re coming from. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987/28 "2014-11-19T20:03:49Z")
> [@storyteller0910](#): > > I hope that one year soon I’ll bump into Steve Forbes at a donut shop and he’ll give me $10 million on a whim… but I don’t count on it. > > The thing is, there is absolutely NO motivation for any given player to do as you suggest, let alone all of them. Let us suppose that you are [John Brown](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(wide_receiver)), and it’s early in 2014. > > You have finished your college career; it was fairly successful, but you were not a household name and you’ve attained no fame or recognition on which you can trade. You’re 24. You have a degree, and with it, plus whatever minor local connections you have made in your time in Pittsburgh, you could get a job that pays a whole $50,000-$60,000 a year. > > You have the choice to declare for the NFL draft. If you do this, you will (as it turns out) be picked in the third round by the Arizona Cardinals (91st overall). You will sign a 4-year contract worth around $2.8M. Of that, a little over $500,000 is fully guaranteed, so if you blow out your knee forever on the first day of camp, you’ll still get as much as you would make in 5 years working a regular job. You will be on TV. You will be able to live comfortably. You have a young daughter - you can now give her more or less anything you think she ought to have. If you play well - and you’re fast and smart, so you probably will - you’ll earn that full $2.8M and potentially much, much, _much_ more. Four years from now you’ll be a free agent, and if you don’t like Arizona there are 31 other cities from which to choose. > > Or you can go the RedWiggler route, and boycott the draft out of principle. The NFL will still play its 2014 season, even if literally every draft-eligible player boycotts… you really think losing a single rookie class will make the NFL buckle? You will get the aforementioned mid-level job. You will give your young daughter what you can afford. While you sit for a year, your skills will deteriorate. Maybe you get in a car accident or fall down the stairs and break your leg. You have a chance of never getting an NFL payday, ever. > > And remember… your motivation to bend and enter the draft gets _stronger_ with every _other_ player who refuses to declare. You look up one day and the 14 guys ahead of you at your position, all moved by RedWiggler’s protests that it’s not fair, have refused to declare. You’re suddenly the best WR in the draft. The New Orleans Saints, who want a fast WR, let it be known that if you declare, they’ll take you #20 overall and guarantee you seven million dollars. > > If you are John Brown, why would you say “no?” Because of some arbitrary principle that says you should get to pick your own team? Even if that principle is true, who cares? John Brown’s interests are best served by entering the draft and going where he’s drafted… and he’s responsible first and foremost for his own welfare, and that of his family. > > * * * > > And by the way, it’s a stupid principle. The NFL teams are not really analogous to 32 individual, discrete companies; though they “compete” on the field, they don’t compete in the way that matters (financially). Really, it’s more akin to 32 departments of the same company. You don’t like the department to which you’re assigned, your choices are to work there anyway, to go work at a different company, or - if you have considerable leverage - to force a switch. Same as the NFL. It’s always in John Brown’s immediate interests to play ball with the system. Keeping labor in line by financial necessity is a tried and true tactic of those in positions of power. A cartel like the NFL should be held to higher standards by the public. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987/29 "2014-11-19T20:10:33Z")
> [@Hamlet](#): > > Alrighty then. As long as we understand where you’re coming from. I don’t know why such a position would disqualify me from this particular discussion, which is specifically about players bucking the current draft system. If we only let football fans who like the current system discuss these subjects, we won’t get a very diverse group of opinions. ---
**Author:** ![Hamlet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hamlet/32/2818_2.png) [@Hamlet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamlet)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987/30 "2014-11-19T20:43:58Z")
> [@Red\_Wiggler](#): > > I don’t know why such a position would disqualify me from this particular discussion … I didn’t say it did. You are more than free to opine on the topic as much as you like. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987/31 "2014-11-19T20:46:10Z")
> [@Hamlet](#): > > I didn’t say it did. You are more than free to opine on the topic as much as you like. :slaphands: ---
**Author:** ![storyteller0910](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecae2f/32.png) [@storyteller0910](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/storyteller0910)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987/32 "2014-11-19T23:26:23Z")
@ **RedWiggler** - Please don’t think I’m not interested in or don’t think you have a right to your opinion. But if I may, I’d like to tease it out a bit more. You acknowledge in your response to me that the welfare of the incoming players is not particularly of interest to you, as it is best served by playing ball. You also state that you’re not interested in the entertainment of football fans, nor in the success of the NFL as an entity. You’d be fine with a dramatic reduction in the total number of teams (which would be incredibly likely if your ideas were implemented). The net result of _that_ would be an equally dramatic reduction in the amount of actual jobs there would be in the NFL - both for players and for ancillary personnel. So: your idea would actually hurt, financially and/or “emotionally” (for lack of a better term), the _vast_ majority of the people involved in the enterprise: fans, owners, and most players. It would also cause indirect financial harm to the cities and communities where teams die, since most NFL teams are a net positive economically for their communities. This means that a great many people - probably more than half the country, all told - would suffer in one way or another for the implementation of your proposal. Given this, why should _anyone_ support it? Who _does_ benefit? The players get poorer (overall), the owners get poorer (overall), thousands of vendors and janitors and groundskeepers and trainers lose their jobs, cities suffer, everyday citizens lose a preferred entertainment option. But I don’t see anyone who is in _better_ shape. I’m not much interested in an abstract principle the end result of which is that everyone involved is worse off, so you’ll have to do better than that. Show me some concrete benefit associated with your idea - _someone_ must be better off under your system (apart from the people who hate the NFL and want it to fail for pure spite, but I don’t much care about them), or it’s not worth discussing. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987/33 "2014-11-20T00:10:12Z")
> [@DCnDC](#): > > That was not my point; I wasn’t saying a good player will instantly make an awful team great, that’s ludicrous. I was saying that an awful team will not ruin a truly NFL-worthy player, as **diku** ’s post implicated. > > For example, the only team to ever go 0-16 had Calvin Johnson, a top-5 NFL player since the day he set foot on an NFL field. And yet Calvin Johnson is still in the league. Playing on godawful teams did not prevent Barry Sanders, to stay with the Lions theme, from having a great career, making the Hall of Fame, and being considered one of the most transcendent players in the history of the league (okay, to be fair, the Lions during that period were not “godawful,” but rather somewhere between bad and fair to middling, but still…). That’s one hell of an excluded middle. The fact that Hall of Fame players can transcend bad situations does not prove that all merely good players will. There are lots of guys that wind up in situations that don’t suit them; usually it’s not a matter of simply being a bad teams, but skillset fits. A guy is drafted to play a certain role in a certain scheme, and then the coaches change and the scheme changes, and a guy who might have been a starter in one system is a bench guy in another. By the time he has a chance to be a free agent, and look for a team that fits him better, he’s 26, doens’t have starter experience, and thus a lot of teams would just as soon draft a younger guy. Or maybe he signs with a team that does fit him, blows a knee, and by the time he can come back, that coach gets fired too, and they cut you. And now you’re older, off a knee injury, never been a starter and you’re looking like a never-was. Whcih doesn’t mean Diku’s claim wasn’t wrong as well. Just that there are plenty of in-between cases. ---
**Author:** ![diku](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4af34b/32.png) [@diku](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/diku)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987/34 "2014-11-20T02:43:55Z")
Honestly, I think it’s more at the QB position that any other position that my thinking applies. A receiver doesn’t get pounded on every play like a QB does. A running back does, which is why I think you see a lot of busts at running back when they go to horrible teams, teams that draft a QB or RB thinking that’s what’s going to turn them around. When it’s their offensive line that’s the problem, or they have no one to throw to, or no one to help the running game out. Yes, there are some that will transcend. As much as I don’t like him, Peyton Manning is an example, drafted by an awful Colts team, but was smart or lucky enough to not take the pounding that a lot of rookie QB’s do. Let’s face it…you’re a stud college player that’s a QB. Do you really want to be drafted by the Jaguars or Titans? (Note, I’m a Titans fan, so I do have something in this) There’s no way you look at those situations and say that’s where I want to go. So I don’t consider someone whiny or a crybaby if they come out and say that. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987/35 "2014-11-20T03:02:41Z")
> [@diku](#): > > Honestly, I think it’s more at the QB position that any other position that my thinking applies. … > > Let’s face it…you’re a stud college player that’s a QB. Do you really want to be drafted by the Jaguars or Titans? (Note, I’m a Titans fan, so I do have something in this) There’s no way you look at those situations and say that’s where I want to go. So I don’t consider someone whiny or a crybaby if they come out and say that. Yeah, but when someone is transcendantly awful as, say Blaine Gabbert or JaMarcus Russell, IMO it strains credulity to think he’d have been an all-pro if he’d just gone to a better situation. But there are cases like you describe; I think David Carr probably was one. RG3 might be another. But as to the last paragraph … I think this is one of the many situations where elite competitors think differently from the rest of us; they really do learn to “focus on the things I can control.” For the last few years I’ve been very motivated by something Peyton Manning said at his first press conference at Denver. When asked why he chose Denver, and whether or not he could really be sure he had made the right decision, he said: > [@](#): > > I really felt—the tough decisions I’ve had to make, where to go to college, whether to stay or go my senior year—you have options and you really believe that you can make any of them work. I’ve always believed that it’s up to me and the people here around me to make this the right decision. It will be speculated on and debated for months to come, whether it was the right decision or not. **I will go out and try to make it the right decision**. Most of us, certainly not me, do not think that way: that I have the capacity to make any situation work, I can overcome any barrier. But at the risk of getting all ESPN-schmaltzy, that is the mentality of a great competitor, and does not come naturally to most of us. If your mentality is “I won’t succeed with this team or that team or the other team…” you’re probably already halfway to failure, wherever you end up. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987/36 "2014-11-20T14:01:35Z")
> [@storyteller0910](#): > > @ **RedWiggler** - > > Please don’t think I’m not interested in or don’t think you have a right to your opinion. But if I may, I’d like to tease it out a bit more. > > You acknowledge in your response to me that the welfare of the incoming players is not particularly of interest to you, as it is best served by playing ball. > > You also state that you’re not interested in the entertainment of football fans, nor in the success of the NFL as an entity. You’d be fine with a dramatic reduction in the total number of teams (which would be incredibly likely if your ideas were implemented). The net result of _that_ would be an equally dramatic reduction in the amount of actual jobs there would be in the NFL - both for players and for ancillary personnel. > > So: your idea would actually hurt, financially and/or “emotionally” (for lack of a better term), the _vast_ majority of the people involved in the enterprise: fans, owners, and most players. It would also cause indirect financial harm to the cities and communities where teams die, since most NFL teams are a net positive economically for their communities. > > This means that a great many people - probably more than half the country, all told - would suffer in one way or another for the implementation of your proposal. > > Given this, why should _anyone_ support it? Who _does_ benefit? The players get poorer (overall), the owners get poorer (overall), thousands of vendors and janitors and groundskeepers and trainers lose their jobs, cities suffer, everyday citizens lose a preferred entertainment option. But I don’t see anyone who is in _better_ shape. I’m not much interested in an abstract principle the end result of which is that everyone involved is worse off, so you’ll have to do better than that. Show me some concrete benefit associated with your idea - _someone_ must be better off under your system (apart from the people who hate the NFL and want it to fail for pure spite, but I don’t much care about them), or it’s not worth discussing. Goodness, so many flawed assumptions and conclusions. Killing the draft won’t kill teams, especially if the NFL would become an open league, admitting any club that wants in. Instead of a reduction in teams, I support having about a hundred of them. Or about three times as many jobs for players. And if the presence of a franchise is so integral to a city’s economy – which is hardly a given, according to the many studies done on the subject – then why not expand those benefits to other towns? Why does Baltimore get to enjoy the benefit but Des Moines can’t? Having just 32 teams certainly helps those 32 teams enjoy a great deal of profitability but doesn’t appear to do much for anyone else. I’ve seen the ridiculous argument that in the television age, everyone can pick a team to root for and see it play all the time, but that’s not really the same thing as having your own, now is it? In the short term, signing up immediately is about the players’ only real choice. With a few exceptions, they’re a pretty replaceable bunch. “Next man up!” Which is a nice rallying cry for the fans and players while glossing over the casualty rate and the possible end of a career that triggers it. But the concept of parity is so important to fans that they’re willing to overlook just about any abuse in order to get it. God forbid these guys have a little bit of freedom in their career decisions because of how lucky they are to be playing at all. Do we all think so little of them that we are happy with this? ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2014, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987/37 "2014-11-21T20:22:28Z")
> [@furt](#): > > The other option is to go to Canada. Tom Cousineau, Joe Theismann, Rocket Ismail, and others have done this. It’s not really much of an option today. It wasn’t uncommon in the 1970s, through the early 1990s, which is where your named examples did this, and when the CFL had an owner or two who was willing to throw some money around. However, the CFL currently has a much more strict (and very low) salary cap. As of this past season, each CFL team has a salary cap (for the entire team!) of only [$5 million](http://cfldb.ca/faq/compensation/), meaning that the average player salary is only around $80,000. The caliber of player who would consider not reporting to the lousy NFL team that drafted him (i.e., probably one of the top picks in the draft) would likely be looking at an annual salary (if he played for an NFL team) that would, by itself, count for most, if not all, of a CFL team’s entire player budget. In other words, the disgruntled draftee would have to be willing to go to Canada, and play for a season, for a tiny fraction of what he would have been making while playing for a crummy NFL team. Given that most players realize how short their careers are likely to be (and there’s always the distinct possibility that you’d get seriously injured during your season in the CFL), I’d expect that very few would be willing to trade off nearly all of a year’s worth of salary for the chance to dictate which NFL team they’d go to. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2014, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987/38 "2014-11-21T20:26:45Z")
> [@Red\_Wiggler](#): > > And if the presence of a franchise is so integral to a city’s economy – which is hardly a given, according to the many studies done on the subject – then why not expand those benefits to other towns? Why does Baltimore get to enjoy the benefit but Des Moines can’t? Having just 32 teams certainly helps those 32 teams enjoy a great deal of profitability but doesn’t appear to do much for anyone else. I’ve seen the ridiculous argument that in the television age, everyone can pick a team to root for and see it play all the time, but that’s not really the same thing as having your own, now is it? A couple of things here: 1. The argument has been made that 32 NFL teams is already stretching the talent pool too thinly. Teams in smaller markets like Jacksonville struggle to fill the seats, especially if they play poorly. 2. There are already football teams in many other markets beyond the 32 current NFL teams, with enthusiastic fans, merchandise sales, etc. It’s college football (and, in some parts of the country, high school football has a huge following, as well). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-if-you-dont-register-for-the-nfl-draft/704987.md?page=1)