The NFL’s annual college draft is by far the biggest event—and circus—of its kind compared to similar occasions in every other professional sports league. If you can get over some of the boorish fans on the draft floor¹, it can be a particularly intriguing event for any sports fan. Yet, what underlies the appeal of draft day is not quite the prospective talent available, but rather the engrossing mix of economics and intrigue that governs how that talent gets selected.

Cap-o-nomics

Unlike other sports, the intriguing selection process of the NFL’s draft is predicated on one overwhelming factor: the annual salary cap. Every team must constrain the contracts of all their players to a figure no higher than this league determined limit or face fines and draft pick penalties². The stark reality of cap ramifications means that teams simply cannot afford to draft based on the best talent available³. Instead, a club has to draft based on its present needs. Every pick is an opportunity to bring in a young player who will cost less and play longer than a comparable free agent. If a club needs a dominant Free Safety, like Washington did, then that team must go and pick a player like Sean Taylor with the fifth selection of the draft. In drafts of days gone by, nobody would ever have considered picking a safety so high. Now, teams have less cap room for free agents and Washington had long ago committed themselves to using this draft to fill their safety postion. That’s why a receiver like Roy Williams, whose talent in a widely coveted position would have made him a top-four pick before the salary cap, dropped all the way down to the seventh pick of the draft; teams simply don’t get any better means than the draft to satisfy personal needs and they now use high picks to get the player that suits them. Thus, the salary cap has made the draft a much more effective and fruitful market than it ever was before.

A finite limit on contract flexibility also means there’s no hording of draft talent in the NFL. That’s why teams like the New York Giants pay through the nose to get a player like Eli Manning⁴. And, even more importantly, it’s why the latter picks in the draft involve so much more deliberation and desperation on the part of draft managers. For example the Philadelphia Eagles surprisingly traded up to take mammoth tackle Shawn Andrews with the 49er’s 16th pick. The Eagles swapped their first-round pick and added their secound round pick to get Andrews. That second rounder is not an insignificant aspect of the deal⁵. The 49er’s cap problems of previous years have forced them to change their personnel policy such that they now trade down to pick numerous and cheaper draft prospects rather than use the off-season to collect a few high priced free-agents as teams with low cap-figures elect to do. The salary cap has forced teams to look for real value deeper in the draft and made every draft pick as much an excercise in league economics as much as it is an excercise in claiming talent.

The salary cap is why football fans watch the draft with so much interest and why they either dance for joy or chatter on their fingernails with each selection. I even yelled for joy when the Raiders picked Robert Gallery to be their rock at left tackle for, hopefully, a long time to come. Whatever else you may think about the salary cap, it certainly makes the NFL’s draft one of the most interesting off-season activities in all of pro sports.

¹ Eli Manning and his father Archie didn’t do anything wrong by alerting the Chargers that he didn’t want to play for them—frankly, I wouldn’t my kid to be pounded into the turf due to San Diego’s patheitc o-line either. It’s a shame the whole event went public, but even then, it was annoying to hear him being booed when he went up and acknowledged his selection as pleasantly as he could. Compare Manning’s draft day composure to basketball player Steve Francis’ sullen charmlessness, when he was drafted by the then Vancouver Grizzlies, and you’ll have a better indication of the type of person who deserves to be booed on draft day.

² Unlike the luxary tax imposed on free-spending teams by Major League Baseball, NFL teams do not have the option to transgress the salary cap.

³ Frequently cited is the fact that the Buffalo Bills did draft the best talent available to them in 2003 by picking Willis McGahee and the men involved in that decision are now out of a job this season.

⁴ I actually think the Chargers did get good value for their first pick of the draft. By receiving Phillip Rivers, another pick in this draft and a first and fifth rounder for 2005 as well, this deal was crucial for a team that needs to rebuild as extensively as San Diego.

⁵ NFL players have a brutishly short shelf-life. Rookie players can expect to be blooded and asked to contribute almost immediatly after training camp. Even a late-round pick in the NFL has a much greater chance of seeing action in his first-year than any hockey or baseball player drafted in the same year.