Deion Sanders says Shedeur & Hunter will decide where they play

chris98251 said:

There in lies the issue, nobody looks back at history anymore, pity, and not just in the NFL.

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They will know all the names from this draft.

NoGain said:

I'm with Deion on this one. The draft is a totally archaic system that should go the way of the dinosaur. I mean, we live in a free country, don't we? Why can't NFL prospects go where they want to, play where they want to play? I'm surprised this hasn't gone to the courts yet. The draft should be done away with in all professional sports. It's a mild form of indentured servitude.

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Part of the success of the NFL is selling hope. Any franchise/fanbase thinks they can turn it around with the draft and within a couple of years with that parity. Without it I imagine LA, NY and Texan teams would probably dominate as everyone would just go there.

Look at the champions league in Europe. It's getting really boring and stale as the same teams are there and are either funded by oil money- PSG, Man City or in absolutely stupid debt at which they don't get punished- Barcelona, Real Madrid.

For all the Sanders hype. How good is he actually? Is he just being hyped up since next years draft class isn't great. They had 4 wins last year with lots of NIL recruits.

What's he good/bad at?

I think this is part of a larger issue - you can gather all the talent in the world; turning that into a team is an entirely different matter. This crazy portal crap is basically going to result in a new team every year for those that can't pay to keep their core together. I think Sanders struggled with that specifically and the upgrade in competition didn't help.

NoGain said:

Put the competitive balance thing aside. That's beside the point. From all I've read on this issue the only thing that keeps the draft from being ruled illegal under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act is the fact that there's a player's union. There's nothing quite like this where a player (worker) can't go out into the marketplace and sell their services to the highest bidder and or to the team they'd most like to work for.

The draft will eventually go away. It may take some time and be incremental in nature, but its days are eventually numbered. I mean, just look at the NIL thing and the transfer portal in college. The handwriting is on the wall. Things are changing. The players are getting more power.

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The primary reason the draft hasn't come under legal scrutiny is that the players agreed to it. There is nothing inherently illegal about it. Mutually beneficial compromises happen in every market.

Glasgow Seahawk said:

For all the Sanders hype. How good is he actually? Is he just being hyped up since next years draft class isn't great. They had 4 wins last year with lots of NIL recruits.

What's he good/bad at?

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I think he is overrated if someone else was his dad no body would be talking about him. Pull up the Colorado vs Oregon game from last year it was his true test and failed badly

Glasgow Seahawk said:

For all the Sanders hype. How good is he actually? Is he just being hyped up since next years draft class isn't great. They had 4 wins last year with lots of NIL recruits.

What's he good/bad at?

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Well, Deion says he's a top 5 pick.

Torc said:

Well, Deion says he's a top 5 pick.

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I guess not having to play anyone this year, he might fool someone. It’s not like he has to play against UW, UO, SC, Michigan, Texas, OU orr Ohio St.

Glasgow Seahawk said:

Part of the success of the NFL is selling hope. Any franchise/fanbase thinks they can turn it around with the draft and within a couple of years with that parity. Without it I imagine LA, NY and Texan teams would probably dominate as everyone would just go there.

Look at the champions league in Europe. It's getting really boring and stale as the same teams are there and are either funded by oil money- PSG, Man City or in absolutely stupid debt at which they don't get punished- Barcelona, Real Madrid.

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My argument had NOTHING to do with the good of the game. It was simply about the archaic nature of the draft.

knownone said:

The primary reason the draft hasn't come under legal scrutiny is that the players agreed to it. There is nothing inherently illegal about it. Mutually beneficial compromises happen in every market.

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I said all along that the only reason why the draft wasn't illegal under the Sherman Anti-Trust act was because there was a player's union.

NoGain said:

I said all along that the only reason why the draft wasn't illegal under the Sherman Anti-Trust act was because there was a player's union.

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Sure, but your argument removes agency from the players. When, in reality, the players chose to accept terms that allowed the draft to exist. So, there really is nothing illegal there. It's similar to an exclusivity agreement with a cellphone provider, where the arrangement might technically challenge certain legal boundaries but remains perfectly legal if A) the terms are clearly stated and B) the customer voluntarily agrees to those terms. No one says, "Cell phone plans would be illegal if customers didn't sign." But that's basically the same argument for the draft being illegal.

knownone said:

Sure, but your argument removes agency from the players. When, in reality, the players chose to accept terms that allowed the draft to exist. So, there really is nothing illegal there. It's similar to an exclusivity agreement with a cellphone provider, where the arrangement might technically challenge certain legal boundaries but remains perfectly legal if A) the terms are clearly stated and B) the customer voluntarily agrees to those terms. No one says, "Cell phone plans would be illegal if customers didn't sign." But that's basically the same argument for the draft being illegal.

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I haven't argued against what you're saying. I've said all along that the player's union is the only thing that legally keeps the draft from being illegal. If the players, however, sued and/or disbanded the union and took the legality of the draft to the courts, they would likely win under our existing anti-trust laws.

I could, at some point down the road, envision players challenging their own union for not allowing players to sell their talents to the highest bidder, which, from my understanding, is the essential illegality of the draft under anti-trust law that's been allowed to exist because of the player's union.

But putting the legality/illegality issues aside, I just personally think the idea of the draft is almost primitively archaic. And this is coming from someone who actually enjoys the draft, and sees some of the benefits of it from a competitive balance standpoint. It's not difficult for me to hold such seemingly opposing viewpoints.

NoGain said:

I haven't argued against what you're saying. I've said all along that the player's union is the only thing that legally keeps the draft from being illegal. If the players, however, sued and/or disbanded the union and took the legality of the draft to the courts, they would likely win under our existing anti-trust laws.

I could, at some point down the road, envision players challenging their own union for not allowing players to sell their talents to the highest bidder, which, from my understanding, is the essential illegality of the draft under anti-trust law that's been allowed to exist because of the player's union.

But putting the legality/illegality issues aside, I just personally think the idea of the draft is almost primitively archaic. And this is coming from someone who actually enjoys the draft, and sees some of the benefits of it from a competitive balance standpoint. It's not difficult for me to hold such seemingly opposing viewpoints.

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So what is your suggestion for a system that is less "archaic" but preserves the league's competitiveness and parity?

Torc said:

So what is your suggestion for a system that is less "archaic" but preserves the league's competitiveness and parity?

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I'm not sure. It would be an interesting discussion to have. Probably some kind of hard CAP along with other measures. I'm just not all that convinced it would necessarily lead to some great competitive imbalance. For one, teams only have room for one franchise QB. And really, there's only so many premium positions (LT, CB, WR, Edge). It would also force teams to make their franchises attractive destinations in terms of things like facilities, how well players are treated, how good the ownership/general management/coaching staff is, etc...

I don't know. Oftentimes such fears are greatly exaggerated.

You know, I always thought it was totally archaic that a college student athlete was forbidden to make money in ways that to me seemed perfectly legal. The thought that Johnny Manziel was penalized and had to sit out part of a season because he made money signing autographs was utterly absurd to me. You mean it was okay for him to work at MacDonalds for near minimum wage when he could sign autographs for larger amounts of money?

I thought for years this was going to go by the wayside in some such fashion. Even the idea that a player couldn't transfer to another college if they so chose without sitting out for some extended period of time seemed like a totally arbitrary concept to me. It was no surprise to me years later to see these archaic practices/restraints done away with.

College is different for me. I personally think the NFL should pay for their own farm/minor league system and college should remain amateur.

Torc said:

College is different for me. I personally think the NFL should pay for their own farm/minor league system and college should remain amateur.

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That ship has pretty much sailed. College football is a shytshow. There's no central governing body minding the store. It's just the elite football universities in their fiefdoms grabbing as much for themselves as they can. Eventually it's going to shake itself into some kind of independent super-structure from the rest of college sports and find some way to more seemlessly dovetail with the NFL structure. No one quite knows exactly what it's going to look like in the end.

Changes coming fast as lightening now.

PS> I heard some analyst not too long ago speculating that we might see college move toward a more NFL-like structure, with a player's union bargaining with some new sort of college football governing body over all sorts of things like an NIL CAP and the like. Who knows where this might end up.

I don't see the NFL creating some sort of minor league system. NFL owners are notoriously cheap. They wouldn't pay for such a thing when they have the college football system already in place.