The college system is such a benefit to the NFL as it is a free system to develop future NFL talent. What if that were to go away though?
People have brought up a minor league system before, but football is one of the hardest sports to develop talent, however.
Injuries happen way too often, and players’ longevity is short. There’s also a lot I’m missing.
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No.
They would figure something out, there’s too much money involved not to.
I don’t think so, the NFL is such a huge industry. I think if college football were to go away or fade then, despite some differences since the NFL doesn’t have an antitrust exemption, it would develop something akin to minor league baseball to develop talent.
In a hypothetical world where college football ceases to exist, the NFL would try to set up their own minor league, but it wouldn’t be the same. It’s hard to comprehensively scout the entire nation’s high school football programs. A lot of NFL superstars were discovered by going to smaller colleges
College football does a huge service for the NFL, but if it went away the NFL would absolutely still survive and thrive.
They would just start an under 21 league, fill it with many of the same players and coaches, have them play on Saturdays, and basically recreate the college system, just focusing on the top 20% of recruits. The current development leagues fail because they are secondary to college and aren’t really created for development purposes; without college that problem goes away.
The development league wouldn’t be as successful as CFB, but the NFL wouldn’t need it to be. It would still weed out players and develop talent, and it would probably at least break even in turns of money spent.
It would survive, but there’d be a meaningful drop in talent. The college system works because it gives players/ students an environment to get an education while they continue developing as players. That way, the vast majority of college players who do not develop into viable NFL prospects still finish their time in college with reasonable career options.
A minor league would be a tougher sell– “You will earn a pittance, and you will have a 3%(?) chance of joining the NFL after a few years”.
That’s not to say that the college system is without flaws. 18-22 year olds sacrificing huge amounts of time, energy, and sometimes their health for a system that they receive fairly minimal benefits from.
They’d do exactly what baseball does.
Not that they’d ever need to cause CFB isn’t going anywhere… but that’s what they’d do.
It could surely *survive.* It would just have to fundamentally change how it drafts players.
I think so, but it would require setting up a brand new feeder system which wouldn’t be an easy task.
Oh definitely. They’d just have to go back to having minor league teams like they did in the 60s.
That being said, college football isn’t going anywhere. It’s the older version of the sport and in part of the country it’s the more popular version. I think the NFL could even become more powerful without college football. Controlling an additional level of the sport would open up more opportunities for them.
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