BlueTalon":2fnno0f9 said:
Some very astute observations. But whatcha gonna do? Can't not have a draft.
Kinda reminds me of a Churchill quote: "...democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried..."
Of course you can, it seems to work alright for non-American sports.
How about you eliminate the rookie cap, you declare for the "draft" but actually then it's just a free-for-all. If some goons want to overpay for the top 5 rookies in the class then go ahead, on the other hand a team that plays it wisely no longer has to "trade down" to get more picks and can pick up a lot of cheap players. For every team like the Falcons and Vikings that would happily trade every pick below the second round to get 3 first round picks, there's a team like Seattle that would happily pick 20 guys in the 4-5th round if they could at the same financial outlay.
The difference between the NFL and European soccer teams for example is that no team is
really richer than any other due to the salary cap (yes, we have the richest owner and other teams have bigger turnovers, but there's no system where one team can simply outbid another due to the money they have because it would cripple the rest of the team), so there's no chance that a team can simply overpay the top rookie every year and build a fantastic team, because the cap space isn't there to do so.
Most importantly there'd no prize for coming last in the NFL.
Of course, that wouldn't solve the problem that Kelly is referring to, but the NFL could easily survive without the draft