NFL Developmental league....Thoughts???

[smbruin22]

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yeah this is an excellent point, and aside from a few guys who come out of nowhere late in their careers, it's a pretty efficient market in football - it's fairly rare for an undrafted player to have a huge impact.

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i see this with players from canada who make the nfl, often the practice squad. they stay for a few years in the NFL and then they're replaced by younger guys straight out of NCAA.

i think minor league NFL would work well in USA if NCAA wasn't so huge. i mean, without its two SEC teams, i think alabama would be all over a minor league NFL.

[ArcticKnight]

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Theres also the Arena Football League and the AFL2.

One of the reasons I dont think an NFL-D league would work is because football players shelf-lives are too short imo. Its not worth it for a team to develope a player in a minor league system for a few years to have them come up and play for a limited time in the pros. College football is basically the NFL-D league...

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yeah this is an excellent point, and aside from a few guys who come out of nowhere late in their careers, it's a pretty efficient market in football - it's fairly rare for an undrafted player to have a huge impact.

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That was one of the factors I was worried about. I was just thinking that the US market is so hungry for football, that someone would "smell" TV revenues and say, a spring summer CFL could have a market, but only if they could draw a link to the NFL product.

[Triumph36]

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Theres also the Arena Football League and the AFL2.

One of the reasons I dont think an NFL-D league would work is because football players shelf-lives are too short imo. Its not worth it for a team to develope a player in a minor league system for a few years to have them come up and play for a limited time in the pros. College football is basically the NFL-D league...

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yeah this is an excellent point, and aside from a few guys who come out of nowhere late in their careers, it's a pretty efficient market in football - it's fairly rare for an undrafted player to have a huge impact.

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That was one of the factors I was worried about. I was just thinking that the US market is so hungry for football, that someone would "smell" TV revenues and say, a spring summer CFL could have a market, but only if they could draw a link to the NFL product.

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I really don't think Americans are *that* hungry for football. The XFL died on the table and the World Football League abandoned its North American based franchises fairly quickly IIRC. Arena football is popular in the cities where it's played but I can't see it becoming a television phenomenon. Football can really be a horribly boring game if it's played poorly - and I suspect such a developmental league might fall into that trap.

[MicroBob]

If it was necessary or would be helpful or even realistic then it would have been done by now.

Lower level players are on the NFL practice-squads.
Many players who aren't good enough for the NFL end up playing CFL, AFL or AFL2. Very few of these players end up improving enough to make the NFL.

Baseball requires a more gradual progression through the levels for the players for a variety of reasons. The top draft-choice out of high school or college is just not ready for the major-leagues and would get creamed. He needs experience in A ball and AA ball just to have a chance to be ready to handle the big-league game.

The different sports need different amounts of minor-league systems to groom their players for whatever reasons.

[rwperu34]

I've always wondered why they don't have a full on 32 team minor league system. They could play the games on Wedensday night. There'd be plenty of support locally, much like minor league baseball. As for the efficency of the market, I hear quite often that so and so was signed this week from his local grocery store. The other negative is, guys on your practice squad can be signed away by any other team. Most players are going to improve over time. It sucks when a team has to cut its third round pick of that year because he's not ready and they don't have a spot on the roster.

I'd think it would be worth it just for the development of the QB. There's so much attrition at that positioin, there aren't enough QBs to go around. Part of that problem is, there are only 32 starting spots, so only 32 guys get to gain experience after college. A minor league system would let 32 more get game experience. The quality of play would be better than NCAA, but not as good as the NFL. They can play by NFL rules so there's no issue there. They'd run their parent teams playbook, so that would help out. Do you think Brady Quinn would be getting better playing in a league that has better talent than the NCAA or taking snaps with the second team in practice? He'd also be a huge draw.

[Triumph36]

rwperu:

QB is the one position where a player often needs a year simply to learn the playbook. Furthermore, developmental teams would almost certainly have to be shared - it makes absolutely no sense to have a full team. 95% of those players wouldn't get on an NFL field - why have a minor league where that's the case?