The NFL should have embraced college football players with open arms in the supplementary draft over the summer. The league should have recognized the extraordinary circumstances presented by a global pandemic and provided young men with an opportunity to make money at a time of tremendous financial uncertainty.
Instead, it rebuffed players whose futures were in doubt. It would not allow juniors and seniors who’d skipped the regular draft — but now foresaw a possible lost season ahead of them — to enter their names.
It was already becoming apparent (to me, at least) that the college football season would be in doubt in mid-May; yet it was around that time that news trickled out that the NFL would not change its standards for the supplemental draft and allow college players to opt in if they feared a lost season.
Now, here we are. The first big domino fell today, when the Big Ten Conference announced it would postpone its football season until the spring. Even if there’s a spring season, it’s possible — and maybe even likely — that the top draft prospects will skip it to avoid playing back-to-back seasons. They’ll opt to leave school early and train for the the future rather than risk injury. It’s going to be very messy.
The supplementary draft — usually held in July by called off this year due to COVID — would have been a perfect opportunity for college football players to bypass the complications of playing college football in 2020. Stars like Clemson’s Travis Etienne, Ohio State’s Shaun Wade and Oklahoma State’s Chuba Hubbard would have gone high in a supplemental draft. So many others might have elected to begin their pro careers.
The NFL, however, prevented players from declaring despite concerns about the novel coronavirus pandemic. It’s easy to imagine the league did so because there might be so many players interested in joining the NFL. And that’s exactly why the NFL should have adapted and let those players in. But the league did not. The players were forced to return to college football.
At the time, it seemed unfair. In retrospect, that decision gets more disgusting by the day.
College football players decided whether to return to school or declare for the NFL draft on Jan. 17. At that time, the concept of a pandemic seemed only suitable for science fiction. The world has, of course, changed enormously since then. Sadly, it hasn’t not changed much since May when the NFL elected not to adjust its rules for the supplementary draft to accommodate more rookies. If the NFL had decided to let them play in the pros, these players would be reporting to training camp. Instead, they watch while their conference postpones, cancels or, even more complicated, attempts to manage these “student-athletes” during a pandemic.
Admittedly, there are many flaws in the design of the NFL’s upcoming season, which will take place without a bubble — the tactic that has so far successfully limited COVID-19 cases in the NBA, WNBA, NHL and Bundesliga. NFL players will be at risk to get the disease. And perhaps the NFL season will get cancelled or postponed, just like most people anticipate will happen to the rest of college football.
But opt-out payments for a rookie in the NFL are worth $150,000. Opt-outs from the NCAA are worth nothing.
At this point, the NFL seems to have more hope than the NCAA. The NFL has means to protect players better than the NCAA could. And, perhaps most importantly, the NFL has the means to pay players, at a time when unemployment is skyrocketing. The NFL isn’t perfect — far from it — but the league could have provided a form of relief with the supplemental draft, a lifeboat for players hoping to avoid the tumult that college football is about to weather. Instead, the NFL turned these athletes away, potentially stalling — rather than accelerating — their futures for a year.
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