A New Look At The Early Declarations In The 2023 NFL Draft

By: Bill Carroll

Today I will be taking A New Look At The Early Declarations In The 2023 NFL Draft. The first player selected in the first NFL Draft, in 1936 was, Jay Berwanger, the star halfback for the Chicago Maroons football team of the University of Chicago, as well as the inaugural Heisman Trophy winner. He never signed and he is still the only first overall selection in league history to never sign or play. He and George S. Halas, the Bears’ team owner, reached an impasse regarding salary. They deadlocked with a gap leaving them $1,500 apart, about $32,028.45 in value today.

This first draft was as far from from today’s slickly produced TV event as the Wright Flyer,  AKA the Kitty Hawk Flyer was from the space shuttle. February 8, 1936, at Philadelphia’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel, NFL clubs selected from a pool of only 90 players. There were no formal scouting departments, no agents, and no 24-hour sports-media coverage. The list of eligible players was compiled from newspaper reports, visits to local colleges by team executives, and personal recommendations to front-office personnel.

That was at a time when professional football was essentially on par with dog racing in the minds of the nations’ sports fans. But in the decades since, pro football has reigned, the unchallenged emperor of spectator sports in this country. But it wasn’t until 1989 that underclassmen, players whose classes had not graduated, were eligible for and could enter the draft, after gaining special eligibility from the league.

Three things worked in concert to change the status quo:

The Supplemental Draft

The supplemental draft was instituted by the NFL in 1977 as a way for players who were not in the regular draft to be made available. Running back Al Hunter was the first player selected, taken by the Seattle Seahawks in the fourth-round of the debut of the supplemental draft. He played four years, rushing for 715 yards in his NFL career.

As with the regular draft, prior to 1990, only those who had exhausted their collegiate eligibility or had graduated were allowed into the supplemental draft. However, since 1993, players who are unable to attend college (often for academic or disciplinary reasons) have been allowed to be selected.

The supplemental draft is different from the NFL draft. Teams that want to select a player must “bid” each bid corresponds to a pick in the following year’s NFL draft. That means, if a team bids a third-round pick this year and “wins” the chance to draft the player, that team will lose their third-round pick in the next NFL draft. It is when teams bid the same pick for a player things get complex.

In the past, the supplemental draft’s order was the same as the NFL draft’s order, and that was the tiebreaker. A team finishing last in the NFL , could, in theory, have the rights to anyone in the supplemental draft pool.

All of this changed due to Bernie Kosar. NFL Draft rules in 1985 called for a supplemental draft in which teams picked, or passed, in the same order as the regular draft. Most commonly, the players involved were fringe to average prospects. Prior to 1985, the singular time that a first-round supplemental pick was used was in 1981, the New Orleans Saints took quarterback Dave Wilson of Illinois, forfeiting a first-round pick in 1982.

March of 1985, Bernie Kosar had recently completed a second season at Miami, meaning, with regard to eligibility, he was still an underclassman. At the time the only players who could enter the NFL Draft were seniors and those who had graduated, so Kosar wasn’t thinking about NFL. However, his father found a loophole for his son to enter the NFL, not via the regular draft but the supplemental draft, with the intention of trying to maneuver a way to the Cleveland Browns.

“My father came up, was the one talking to me about the supplemental draft and the possibility of that,” Kosar said in his new podcast ‘Journey with Bernie.’ “The rule had always been there, but no one had ever thought about it. The supplemental draft to that point hadn’t really been used with people that maybe were worthy of a first-round pick back then.”

“He talked with me about it, but not to be disrespectful to anybody or my dad, I didn’t want to talk about it. I had convinced myself there was no way I was leaving the ‘U,’ no way,” he said. “They are my brothers and that was my team. We won a National Championship in ’83, we went to New Year’s Day Bowls each year and we were going to be even better the next year in ’85-’86.”

March 14, 1985, Kosar held a news conference in Miami to announce he was foregoing his final two years of college eligibility, and going into the NFL Bernie Kosar could have requested eligibility for the regular draft. The Vikings, picking third overall, traded picks with the Oilers, who held the second overall selection, in an attempt to draft Kosar. Buffalo, holders of the number one overall, had signed Bruce Smith, from Virginia Tech.

The Browns had traded with Buffalo, for the first selection of the supplemental draft, sending four regular picks, including Cleveland’s first in 1985 and 1986, to Buffalo. NFL Commissioner Alvin “Pete” Rozelle staged a hearing prior to approving the many-faceted deal, Minnesota strenuously objected, but to no avail.

The USFL

The USFL debuted on March 6, 1983 and the caused a shift in the plate tectonics of professional sports. When Herschel Walker left the University of Georgia at the end of his junior season to sign with the United States Football League. In NFL history it was last seen in 1925, when Harold “Red” Grange left the University of Illinois to enter, [and help save]  the N.F.L., that an undergraduate had been signed with an American football league before completing his college eligibility.

Later, Marcus Dupree, would like Walker, leave college, he was rapidly contracted by the New Orleans Breakers of the U.S.F.L. The U.S.F.L., had an eligibility rule identical to that of the N.F.L., they waived the rule to permit the signing of Dupree. Both Walker and Dupree could not have been drafted by an N.F.L franchise. After the USFL shut down in 1986, the NFL was back in the “driver’s seat” but could the genie, of underclass eligibility, be strong-armed back into the proverbial bottle?

Sherman, E. (2021, August 8). Coaches don`t come down easy on idea of hardship draft. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved January 19, 2023, from https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1988-08-30-8801260764-story.html

The Influence of Agents

The next factor was an unlikely pairing. Norby Walters, a former nightclub owner, and Lloyd Bloom, a then, 25-year-old, self-described salesman, together formed World Sports & Entertainment (“WS & E”) in August 1984. In the past, Walters had represented entertainers such as the Jackson Five, Dionne Warwick, and The New Edition. With their new enterprise, Bloom and Walters hoped to make the transition from managing musical entertainers to representing professional athletes. Less than four years later the cavalcade of concert tickets, handshake bargains, and ‘under-the-table’ payments had crashed to a halt.

After a 17-month FBI investigation, a federal grand jury indicted both on charges ranging from racketeering, mail fraud, and conspiracy to extortion, all in connection with the signing of 44 athletes to professional contracts before their college eligibility had expired. Walters and Bloom were accused of dealing with a reputed organized-crime figure [Michael Franzese], cheating an athlete out of his signing bonus, and threatening clients who attempted to renege, after agreeing to sign.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”) has, in the past, forbidden players from signing with agents, or receiving compensation for athletics or their name, image and likenesses, prior to the expiration of collegiate athletic eligibility. Athletes who violated those rules were considered to have renounced their eligibility in return for payment, and could no longer compete in college athletics.