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The NFL Draft (officially the NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting) is an annual sports draft in which National Football League (NFL) teams take turns selecting amateur football players and other first-time eligible players. Currently, the draft consists of seven rounds. Each team is assigned a selection in each round, with the teams with the worst record from the previous year being assigned the best picks in each round. This helps the league achieve a degree of parity.

The draft is the first chance each team gets at players who have been out of high school for at least three years. Players whose high school class did not graduate three or more years before are not eligible for the draft and hence they are not eligible to play in the NFL. Most drafted players come directly out of college football programs as seniors or juniors, though some underclassmen are eligible, and other players are selected from minor leagues like the Arena Football League.

The NFL allows each team to spend a limited amount of money from its salary cap to sign rookies (including undrafted players). Teams with higher picks get a higher rookie salary cap allocation. In most years, the salary cap increases from the year before, so most years there is more money allocated to teams for signing rookies. This form of salary control is legal because it has been negotiated into the NFL's collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the players' union.

The drafted players are paid salaries commensurate with the position in which they were drafted. High first-round picks get paid the most, and low round picks get paid the least. There is a de facto pay scale for drafted rookies. After the draft, any non-drafted rookies are allowed to sign a contract with any team in the league. These rookie free-agent usually do not get paid as well as drafted players, nearly all of them signing for the predetermined rookie minimum.

The first professional football draft was held in 1936. Originally, it was a low-key affair, for which teams prepared little. Over the years, scouting for the draft has grown to be a complicated pseudo-science, in which teams use workout data from prospects, interviews, game films, and projections of skills as players mature to decide which college players are the best in the country.

In the 1980s, cable sports channel ESPN began televising the draft, which led to an increase in its popularity. Now, "draftniks" like ESPN's Mel Kiper, Jr. work year-round on studying and projecting where players will end up in the draft, and which teams will select them.

Compensatory Picks

In addition to the 32 picks in each round, there are a total of 31 picks dispersed at the ends of Rounds 3-7. These picks, which are known as "Compensatory Picks" are awarded to teams who have lost more talent players then they gained the previous year in Free Agency. These picks do not account for released players or signing players cut by another team. For example, if in the previous year, a team lost two starters and two backup players from other teams signing them as free agents, while they signed only two new backup players, the team would likely receive two compensatory picks. These picks can not be traded.

Supplemental Draft

In late summer, the NFL also holds a Supplemental Draft to accommodate players who did not enter the regular draft because they thought they still had academic eligibility to play college football. The supplemental draft maintains the same team order from the regular draft, with the team with the worst record in the previous season picking first. However, in the supplemental draft, a team is not required to use any picks. Instead, if a team wants a player in the supplemental draft, they submit a "bid" to the Commissioner with the round they would pick that player. If no other team places a bid on that player at an earlier spot, the team is awarded the player and has to give up an equivocal pick in the following year's draft. (For example, RB Tony Hollings was taken by the Houston Texans in the 2nd round of the Supplemental Draft in 2003. Thus in the 2004 NFL Draft, the Texans forfeited a second round pick).

The players who enter the Supplemental Draft are usually graded as players who should be drafted at a later round. Therefore, combining this trend with the strange proceedings of the supplemental draft and the high price a team must give up to take a player, it is easy to see why only 32 players have been taken in the past 26 Supplemental Drafts.

Trivia

*Note: As of 2005

• Quarterbacks have been selected first overall a total of 24 times, more than any other position. Offensive backs, including running backs, halfbacks, and fullbacks, have been selected 23 times.

• Quarterbacks have been selected first overall for five straight years, dating back to 2001. Dating back to 1998, quarterbacks have been selected first seven times in eight drafts.

• Notre Dame and USC have each had five athletes selected #1 in the draft. Auburn, Georgia, Ohio State, Stanford, and Texas have each had three.

• USC is also the first and only school to date to have had back-to-back years in which one of its players went #1 in the draft (in 1968 with Ron Yary and in 1969 with O.J. Simpson).

• Auburn and Penn State are the only two schools to have had three players taken in the top ten of the first round in the same year. Auburn did it in 2005 with RB Ronnie Brown (#2), RB Carnell Williams (#5), and CB Carlos Rogers (#9). Penn State did it in 1995, with RB Ki-Jana Carter (#1), QB Kerry Collins (#5), and TE Kyle Brady (#9).

• Alex Smith, drafted out of Utah in 2005, was the youngest player chosen #1 in the modern era. He was 20 years, 353 days old.

• 253 Smiths have been selected in the draft. Other notable surnames include: Williams (247), Johnson (233), Jones (201), Brown (188).

• There have only been two siblings taken first in the draft in each of their respective years: Peyton Manning in 1998, Indianapolis Colts and Eli Manning in 2004, San Diego Chargers, then traded to New York Giants.

• The first player ever selected in the NFL draft, Jay Berwanger (1936), never played in the NFL.

• So far, only 11 players taken first overall in the draft are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

• 3 players taken first overall in the draft never played in the NFL.

See also

• List of NFL first overall draft choices
• 2002 NFL Draft
• 2004 NFL Draft
• 2005 NFL Draft
• List of NFL Draft Steals
• List of NFL Draft Busts

• National Football League Draft
• National Football League