Mock draft makes players’ selection more efficient & competitive – NFL Feature-Part One
The 2013 draft season starts with a mock exercise next month that will lead up to final draft day at the end of April 2013, allowing 32 franchises in the National Football League (NFL) to recruit aspirant professional football players coming out of universities
and colleges from all over the United States.
It is the only major recruitment source of prospective professional players albeit some of them are picked up as undrafted free agents off the market.
With the professional league's regular season almost halfway through by mid of November every year, the mock draft exercise comes along, through which American college football league players of different calibres and skills start emerging on the surface
in light of commentators, analysts, game punters, professional agents and beat writers’ views and analyses.
Actually, it is a build-up phase that starts classifying players as per their skills and talents, and often the ratings determined in the mock exercise happen to be the final ratings in the actual draft.
For example, in this year’s (2012) mock draft Stanford College’s quarterback Andrew Luck was rated top draft pick of the season, and he was the top draft player of the season throughout the campaign leading up to his final selection by the Indianapolis Colts
as the first overall pick.
So ratings based on the judgement of opinion makers in the market are as much credible as is their views on the remaining aspects of the game. In fact, media campaign which happens to be a sort of marketing and promotion tool for the prospective recruits
clears the way for selection process. It rather helps the cause of recruiters, franchises owners, managers and football players’ agents at the end.
Indirectly, it also creates an infrastructure, promotes transparency and efficiency in the selection process. Further, it helps players get compensated as per their talent and skills.
The NFL allows the team that finishes at the bottom of the rankings a earlier to have a first go in draft selection.
For example, the Indianapolis Colts with only two wins ended the 2011 season as the worst performing team, and as per the league’s rules they qualified for the top pick in the 2012 draft.
Luck signed a four-year contract with the team at the time of his arrival. The ratings and eligible teams for the players at other positions are decided on the same lines.
Every season the league in consultation with and in view of feedback from the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) also takes measures to improve the entire selection process.
The regulator has recently made the contract signing of rookie players a part of the new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) and the change has facilitated efficient signing of these players.
Before this, some teams would delay fresh players’ signings until the start of the actual season, in some cases. Now this is done well before training camp, which is mandatory as per new rules. This has provided a peace of mind to prospective pro players
and helped them focus the game without much distraction.
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