Why the anti-competitive NFL Draft isn’t going anywhere soon

Sometime after 8 p.m. on Thursday evening, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell will step to a lectern in Kansas City and name the first of 259 draft picks to come over the course of three days.

The NFL has turned the draft — tradition on a weekend at the end of April — into an annual offseason dose of football. It’s talked about for weeks in advance, packed with outside attractions and marketed as a time of celebration for the college prospects that are becoming professionals.  

All of that holds true, as does another, lesser-discussed aspect of the NFL and other professional sports drafts: They are a distinctly anti-competitive way for people done with college to enter the labor force. And beyond establishing strict controls over how workers enter into their labor market (and what they are likely to get paid, in the case of the NFL), professional drafts also put up additional barriers to joining the labor market for prospective workers.

It’s something that then-Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett challenged in court in the early 2000s, suing the NFL. He argued his case all the way to the United States Supreme Court, where in 2004 the NFL won out.

And for now, opinions about the viability of alternative systems of talent acquisition for the NFL are moot due to another reality: The NFL and NFL Players Association have no incentive to lower the threshold of becoming a professional football player. 

The diverging interests of the NFL, NFLPA and college football players set the table for an imbalanced system

The NFL Draft is established via the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the NFLPA and the NFL, meaning the players and the league office shape the rules around it.

The reasons for the league to have a draft and protect the model are evident. 

It’s a way to encourage competitive balance, ensuring the worst performing teams get a shot at the best players coming in. It also somewhat curbs a rich-get-richer phenomenon where a few teams might just outspend the rest. (That can still happen, just during free agency later in a player’s career.) Additionally, with college football being the only viable level of football available to players between high school and the NFL, the league has created a quasi three-year farm system in college football. 

The NFLPA exists to look out for the best interests of the players that are part of the union already — not potential future members. Letting more players make the jump to the league sooner would dilute the earning power of current players. 

Thus, the system for college football players to enter the NFL is created apart from them. And economic rights that most other 18-to-20 year olds have are wrested from this group of athletes.

“You can do win-win like that when there’s a third party to make the loser that isn’t involved,” said Andy Schwarz, an economist and partner at the OSKR firm who’s specialized in antitrust work and sports economics.

The NFLPA declined to comment; the NFL league office could not be reached.

In most circumstances, a group of employers competing in a market agreeing to wage structures and hiring methods would be an antitrust violation. 

“But because the NFLPA and the NFL have agreed on the rules that there’s gonna be a draft and salary slots and all that stuff, it’s okay because it was collectively bargained, at least under antitrust law,” said Mit Winter, a sports attorney at Kennyhertz Perry LLC. 

Protecting players is a noble idea, but some warn it strays into paternalism

At the root of the three-year rule for NFL draft eligibility is that a “one-and-done” model or skipping college aren’t seen as sustainable options for football players. Broadly, putting 18- and 19-year-old football players on a field with grown men is unsafe. 

Preventing calamitous injury is the right thing to do, but it still strikes players much older. And players in college are not immune from career-altering injuries, either. In many ways, the draft rules keep a handful of players ready for the pros in college for an additional year of unsalaried labor.

The Athletic’s draft guru Dane Brugler has twice stated that players who were sophomores in 2022 would be top picks in this year’s draft. Quarterbacks Caleb Williams and Drake Maye would both be top picks in the 2023 NFL Draft, Brugler tweeted the week of the draft. And wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. would be the top receiver off the board and “100% be a top-5 pick in this draft if eligible,” according to Brugler

While all three of those players have healthy NIL valuations — $1.4 million for Harrison, $1.5 million for Maye and $2.7 million for Williams, according to the On3 NIL 100 — the signing bonus for a rookie drafted in the Top 10 in 2022 was north of $10 million. And that’s table stakes compared to what stars — especially quarterbacks — make on second contracts.

“Think of the money we’re talking about though,” said Jason Stahl, the founder of the College Football Players Association, “for someone who could, you know, step out after two years of college football, right?”

On the NCAA side, the debates about protecting athletes and amateurism are well worn. Things have changed markedly in the roughly two decades since Clarett challenged the NFL, but college football is still to embrace full-scale professionalization. 

“It’s all just so bizarre when we start talking about college athletes,” Stahl said. “I think we’ve been operating — or not we, but you know, the powers that be in college athletics have been operating from that paternalistic place for so long they don’t even know they’re doing it.”

Absent the ability to earn a fair, comparable salary for their abilities at their respective universities, players like Williams, Maye, Harrison and Brock Bowers take on similar injury risk playing college football without the money of an NFL contract. 

A few more football realities prop up the draft system

NFL teams and scouting departments aren’t in a rush to have to do more evaluation work each draft cycle.

Jim Nagy, the executive director of the Senior Bowl and formerly an NFL scout, said that scouts don’t really have time to dig into sophomores. If he was at a game to watch some specific juniors and seniors and a sophomore or freshman would pop, it didn’t amount to much more than a note to circle back after the current draft cycle ends.

“If you’re a scout, you know, maybe if he’s — look down to see if he’s draft eligible. If he’s at least draft eligible, then you’ll really start focusing in on him if you didn’t see him. But if he’s truly not, if he’s not draft eligible, then you just don’t have enough time to look at a guy that’s not gonna be there for you that particular year,” Nagy said.

Development also happens the fastest when players are getting live reps. Nagy questioned if being on an NFL roster and duking it out with other professionals for reps is the best path to development for a player who could otherwise be getting a lion’s share in college. 

College coaches benefit, too, by retaining players for longer than they otherwise might. 

With so many power brokers and stakeholders benefiting from or content with the status quo, it’s safe to expect players won’t leave college and have professional teams making competitive offers any time soon. 

But one can probably assume Goodell will be at the podium in Detroit sometime around the end of April 2024, announcing the next No. 1 overall pick in the draft.