Steelers’ G.M. says everyone wants to trade down in this draft

[Steelerette]

Some of the fellas here will know how it works better than me, but it all depends. Once you hire an agent or take a sponsor then you're done, you are no longer an amateur and you are not allowed to play college ball anymore.

I'm a little unclear on what happens if you declare for the draft, go undrafted, but you never hired an agent or took a sponsor. I tried asking Mr. Google but I found conflicting reports on your eligibility in that circumstance.

In either case I do believe the large number of not only players but quality players coming out this year will have a few echoes to it:

1) A lot of good talent, guys who would have gone in rounds 3 to 7 on other years, are not going to get drafted.
2) UDFA Bonanza. Every team is going to have the chance to get a little better this offseason. Only the worst managed teams will walk away with nothing.
3) The Canadian Football League and Arena Football League are both about to get a little better.

Not only that but, we're going to see a lot of kids get "screwed over" - I put that in parentheses because they are the ones who made the choice to come out for the draft, but all these underclassmen, means a lot of kids this year are both not going to get drafted, and also not get the chance to complete their college education thanks to their declaring. Student athletes are going to take notice of this and we might see in the future that kids, unless they are surefire 1st or 2nd rounders, are going to stay through their senior year and finish their degree.

If this amount of talent becomes a trend rather than an anomaly we could see several things that happen. Will the league expand rosters? Will we see a pair of expansion teams? Will an alternate league (think USFL) arise? Will kids who go undrafted start declaring for the drafts of regional or competitor leagues? (Remember that kid who declared for the XFL draft?)

A wildcard here is the ruling that college athletes can unionize now. Will undrafted kids in the future become eligible to return to their school for another season? Would their team want them back?

[Dwinsgames]

Some of the fellas here will know how it works better than me, but it all depends. Once you hire an agent or take a sponsor then you're done, you are no longer an amateur and you are not allowed to play college ball anymore.

I'm a little unclear on what happens if you declare for the draft, go undrafted, but you never hired an agent or took a sponsor. I tried asking Mr. Google but I found conflicting reports on your eligibility in that circumstance.

In either case I do believe the large number of not only players but quality players coming out this year will have a few echoes to it:

1) A lot of good talent, guys who would have gone in rounds 3 to 7 on other years, are not going to get drafted.
2) UDFA Bonanza. Every team is going to have the chance to get a little better this offseason. Only the worst managed teams will walk away with nothing.
3) The Canadian Football League and Arena Football League are both about to get a little better.

Not only that but, we're going to see a lot of kids get "screwed over" - I put that in parentheses because they are the ones who made the choice to come out for the draft, but all these underclassmen, means a lot of kids this year are both not going to get drafted, and also not get the chance to complete their college education thanks to their declaring. Student athletes are going to take notice of this and we might see in the future that kids, unless they are surefire 1st or 2nd rounders, are going to stay through their senior year and finish their degree.

If this amount of talent becomes a trend rather than an anomaly we could see several things that happen. Will the league expand rosters? Will we see a pair of expansion teams? Will an alternate league (think USFL) arise? Will kids who go undrafted start declaring for the drafts of regional or competitor leagues? (Remember that kid who declared for the XFL draft?)

A wildcard here is the ruling that college athletes can unionize now. Will undrafted kids in the future become eligible to return to their school for another season? Would their team want them back?

from my understanding once you declare for the draft and become draft eligible you have forgone any remaining collegiate eligibility thus unable to play collegiate athletics ....

now with " unionization " things may change but I doubt that aspect will

[steelreserve]

Once you declare yourself eligible for the draft, you are done playing college sports. You could go back to school (and not play sports) if you could pay for it on your own, I guess, but my suspicion is hardly anybody can, which means you are not only done with college athletics, but in most cases also done with college period. You see stories about these guys doing everything from trying out for CFL teams to working at car washes, either of which you wouldn't be doing if you could go back and take a free ride to showcase yourself for the NFL draft again, or at least get a degree out of it. It really is a bullet to the head for a lot of those guys.

Interesting article about the issue of the CBA and how the rookie wage scale has underclassmen just chomping at the bit to come out early. If you're a second- through seventh-rounder, it actually makes even more sense than ever to come out early, with the three-year contract instead of the fifth-year team option contract for first-rounders. You will probably see a lot more of that kind of talent coming out early now that the agents have figured it out and are out there pitching kids on the idea.

http://mmqb.si.com/2014/01/24/nfl-dr...ssmen-problem/

You'll notice that the first line of the article starts by pointing out the talent drain this has caused for the senior classes in recent years. Less "Deep draft!" than just this group of underclassmen replacing all the ones who came out early last year. The real bump in talent from this effect should have come two or three seasons ago, but as the numbers showed, not a whole lot of difference there.