High school FB players going pro?

If you are a college / Pro football fan, right now your are living in the golden era.
You can watch 20 college games on Saturday and a few sprinkled in during the week.

You can then watch multiple pro games on Sunday and again on Monday and Thursday.

You can watch players develop in college and 3 to 4 years later follow them right into the NFL.

From a fan standpoint the system is in perfect balance and could not be better.

When the NBA started letting HS players in, neither college or the NBA was ever the same or as good.

If your a football fan enjoy the system as it is now. You won't have it much longer
the way things are going.

 

Count me in the group that points out the vast majority of 17- 18-year-olds aren't physically able to handle the NFL. As pointed out already, must of them sit their first year in college, allowing them to develop. The first time a fully mature NFL linebacker in his prime unloads on an 18-year-old hotshot, he'll realize this wasn't such a good idea.

 

Geez, Mark, you might want to invest in a sarcasm detector. This happens to you all the time. You might not want to take everything you read on this board at face value.

 

To all:

NO ONE is suggesting 17- and 18-year-olds should go straight to the NFL. Not even Delaney (“You don’t have to play for the Redskins or the Bears at 17").

What Delaney said was that if players don't want to play college football as currently constructed they should go to the NFL (or, presumably, someone else so inclined) and get them to start a minor league. Or just not go to college and work with IMG (again, or anyone else so inclined) to develop themselves in preparation for an NFL career in a couple of years. Which, Delaney said, is what colleges have been doing for almost a century now.

Again, how much of his statement was serious and how much was smug sarcasm is up for debate.

 

Seems like Delaney was taking a swipe at IMG and their like.

 

THere are over 65,000 D1 college football players. Of the approx 16,000 that are NFL eligible each year. 230 get drafted another 300 or so get tryouts and maybe 180 rookies make a roster.

There are maybe a dozen recruits each year that would be worth paying to come to specific school.

So yeah, there's not only no market for football players who don't go to college there's not enough interest for someone to create a league for them. If the WFL, USFL and NFL Europe can't cut it with adults playing, a bunch of 19 year olds won't draw any interest.

Basketball is slightly different because a couple of HS kids a year could play in the NBA. The D-League should be scouting and drafting HS kids to compete against college. Then eventually, the NBA and their broadcast partners would own a sport that had better quality overall than college and wouldn't have to pay billions to broadcast the NCAA. College basketball would be a niche sport and Mike Krzyzewski and Dick Vitale could have breakfast every Tuesday at the Blue Dolphin in Sarasota and talk about they screwed tens of thousands of kids out of an education by diverting academic funds to train 4 new kids per school how to take a charge.

 

Not how I interpreted it, at all. The accompanying NBC comments were pretty snarky, but in reading Delany's full comments, as a stand alone, he brings some interesting points / thoughts. No matter where you stand on the "pay for play" issue, the NCAA is standing as the lone target. "Why aren't the pros stepping up?" is a valid question. I think he's also projecting, in a way, what a minor league (for pay) system may look like.....and asking folks to consider where the kids may be better off. Different answers for different kids, but where are the majority better off?

I always find it interesting that the NFL (in particular) gets a pass, since a minor league doesn't make fiscal sense. Yet many of the same folks don't seem to care if it makes any less sense for colleges. Broad brush stroke observation, I admit, but one I find interesting.

 

I actually went to see the London Monarchs for a couple of seasons. There were a lot of reasons why NFL Europe failed. Ticket prices were too high. Everyone twigged on pretty quick these weren't the best players. And it went up against Soccer/non-American football/whatever when it was coming down the home stretch in the spring.

 

For a model that may possibly be followed, maybe not as a minor league system, but as a non-college option.

In Canada we've had junior football for more than 100 years. Now I know, totally different markets for a thousand reasons, but the idea is the same. Instead of pushing college age kids off to university where they really don't attend class and get a degree in basket weaving they never intend to use, let them play football -- work some menial job during the day and practice at night and play on the weekends. Put it in non-pro markets the sport will do well. You're not paying kids million dollar contracts, but they're able to earn their own cash on the side. Then when they are 21 or 22, they become draft eligible. The CJFL has produced a number of top players for the CFL over the years, but for them, they also still have the option to go to school after a year or two and play at the CIS level if they decide they want to get an education later on.

There is no reason this should not work, even in a different football culture like the U.S. The closest comparable in Canada would be major junior hockey. Players have the option of education or go right into a junior hockey system that grooms them for the pros. Not everyone makes it to the pros, but then some of that responsibility lands on the player. Those players are not eligible for NCAA hockey, but can still play CIS hockey and are even earning scholarship to attend any Canadian college or university that they qualify for while playing in the CHL. There is also junior A hockey, or tier II junior as they refer to it in Ontario, where players go to attract the attention of scouts and to get a college scholarship.

But the key is, you're not throwing 17 and 18-year-olds in against 30-year-old linebackers in the prime of their career. They're still playing against their peers and still able to develop at a proper rate.

The biggest issue is infrastructure, as I see it. It is difficult to find owners in enough markets all at once that are willing to sink the required funds into these teams to make a go of it. They're not big money makers at any level. Usually the goal is to break even in the regular season and then turn a buck in the post-season. Also, you need to gain that respectability among top recruits -- you can go to the junior team that is just getting off the ground or you an go to an SEC team where every NFL team is going to have scouts at every game, even if you don't play for the first three years at said school.

It has always perplexed me why this wouldn't work.

 

I think two big factors in why minor league baseball and hockey works and minor league football doesn't is 1. The affiliate factor and 2. the need for consistent attendance, for lack of a better term.

People like seeing the baseball and hockey players because they've been sold on the aspect that someday, they'll be seeing them in the majors/NHL. This is also somewhat true with college football, although love of the school is also a major factor. With minor-league football, unless the teams are affiliated with an NFL team (like in the old Continental and Atlantic Coast leagues), there's very little hope of seeing any of those guys become call-ups. Plus, football rosters are so much bigger, nobody's going to care if the long-snapper gets a call-up to their NFL affiliate.

The other issue is attendance. A minor-league baseball and hockey team can draw 4-5,000 per game for 35-70 games. For a football team, they may only have 5-7 home games, and they'd have to draw 20-30,000 fans per game just to be the equivalent of baseball and hockey. That's an awful lot of fans to try to attract to see no-name players who not only likely won't make the big leagues, but aren't even affiliated with them.

ADD: I'm aware that there are some unaffiliated baseball and hockey leagues. But they always seem like they're one step away from the dustbin of history.

 

Actually sarcasm on an internet message board is hard to detect. No tone of voice or facial expressions. It's sad when more than half the comments tend to be of the wise-ass variety.

 

An NFLDL could work -- kind of -- if essentially they were established as NFL jayvee teams.

They could play their games from March through June, a 12-game season with playoffs and then a title game on July 4. All games played at NFL stadiums, with dirt-dog cheap ticket prices. Teams would operate out of the training HQ of the parent franchise.

Unsigned non-collegiate players wishing to play in the NFLDL would have to file for the entry draft before Dec. 31 of each year. NFLDL teams would then draft their rosters out of the draft pool.

Players sign contracts of one or two seasons. Base salary of something like $50,000 per year, with signing bonuses negotiated individually.

Rosters of 55 players with 44 dressed for games.

Players with a total of 48 games of regular-season NFLDL eligibility to be used within five years.

Players could be called up to the NFL parent team and optioned back twice.

Players NOT electing to enter the NFLDL draft pool would be ineligible to sign with the NFL until four years after their HS graduation, or age 23, whichever comes first. No early defections from college.

However, upon reaching those eligibility dates, college players could sign with the NFL -- as unrestricted free agents.