I guess I would point out that extremely few kids are physically ready for the NFL until they are three years out... that said, there was no "legal" way to make money playing football. I think however the economics of the game are such that even "unregulated" very few kids are going to make real money over the value of a scholarship playing football. NFL players are paid way less overall on average vs. MLB and NBA (not even going to soccer). It is numbers & physical realities that ultimately limit this.
And look at baseball... they have an amateur draft every year and pretty much only the first rounders are getting 7 digit signing bonuses. They get paid the pittance minimum unless/until they get to the majors. There might be some good guaranteed money in the second round. But a great many draftees in the lower rounds choose to commit to college baseball for three years (there can be an age quirk where some can become eligible in two).
So yeah, I guess we shouldn't begrudge them getting some money, but I suspect at the end of the day the vast majority of even pretty darn good college football players will not be making huge bucks.
There was a time when football players absolutely needed 3 years of college football to be NFL ready. There was a time when freshman played on the freshman team, and couldn't play varsity.
Over the past couple of decades, high school football, in many cases, has become a factory for producing players much more physically developed than they were when we were their age. Freshman now can star on a college football team.
That said, I do agree that we are talking about a very small minority of players that this would ever apply to. Granted, for all forms of entertainment, only the ultra-elite make good money with their talent as a profession. Football, however, was truly the only sport, the only form of entertainment, where a person had no path to making money legally with their craft in their teenage years.
I'm not really arguing for or against high school kids jumping straight into the NFL (though I could make an argument that the three year requirement is too much). I'm simply arguing that football players in general do not have the same opportunities to make money that all other athletes for all other sports do.
FWIW, players drafted in the first 10 rounds of the MLB draft are guaranteed a signing bonus. In 2019 (most recent I can find), the last player drafted in round 10 earned a $142,200 signing bonus. And then yes, they'll earn some small salary in the minors. Of course, a lot of those mid-round players will opt to play college ball instead.
My other primary point was that I struggle to justify paying a college head coach $5-10 million per year to coach players who had no legal path to make any money. There is no sport with this much disparity -- not even close.
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