The National Football League Draft is an annual event in which the National Football League (NFL) teams select eligible college football players and it is their most common source of player recruitment. The basic design of the draft is that each team is given a position in the drafting order in reverse order relative its record in the previous year—the last place gets positioned first. With this position, the team can either select a player or trade their position to another team for other positions, a player, or players, or any combination thereof. After each team had utilized its position in the drafting order, whether by trading it or selecting a player, a round would be complete. Certain aspects of the draft, including team positioning and the number of rounds in the draft, have seen revisions since its first creation in 1936, but the fundamental methodology has remained the same. The original rationale in creating the draft was to increase the competitive parity between the teams as the worst team would, idealistically, have chosen the best player available.
In the early years of the draft, players were chosen based on hearsay, print media, or other rudimentary evidence of a players ability. In the 1940s, some franchises began employing full-time scouts. The ensuing success of their corresponding teams eventually forced the other franchises to hire scouts also.
Colloquially, the name of the draft each year takes on the form of the NFL season in which players picked could begin playing. For example, the 2010 NFL Draft was for the 2010 NFL season. However, the NFL-defined name of the process has changed since its inception.
The location of the draft has continually changed over the years to accommodate more fans, as the event has gained in popularity. The draft's popularity now garners it prime time television coverage.
Read more about National Football League Draft: Supplemental Draft
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—Grover Cleveland (1837–1908)
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—Donna E. Shalala (b. 1941)
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