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Reply to "John Smoltz's HOF speech on specialization"

Originally Posted by 2020dad:
 And yes I am sure there are a lot of D1 players who also don't meet that definition.  However if we take the D1 guys who quit after freshman year out of the equation I think you will find that a lot more than 1 of 10 get drafted.  How many juniors and seniors do you think are left on D1 teams?  It is not an even distribution among the four classes.  It is a much greater accomplishment to play D1 ball. 

it's true that many things cut down the number of upperclassmen on D1 rosters -- the draft being one of them. Some of the power schools seem to lose a significant chunk of their junior class each year to the draft.  Then there are injuries, on and off the field failure, and burn-out.  So you're right that it probably isn't right to think of 1/2 of D1 rosters as consisting of draft eligible juniors and seniors.  But still, even if you take account of attrition, I would bet it's still true that the VAST majority of D1 players don't get drafted. 

 

Here's a somewhat random sample -- trying to pick a range of schools -- and how many of their draft eligible players got drafted in 2015. 

 

  • Of the 21 draft eligible players at the University of Notre Dame this year exactly 1 got drafted. 
  • Of the 20 draft eligible players at Ohio State 4 got drafted
  • Of the 17 draft eligible players at Cal State Long Beach 2 got drafted.
  • Of the  9 draft eligible players at Vanderbilt,  all 9 got drafted.  (wow) 
  • Of the 13 draft eligible players at Umass Amherst, 0 got drafted. 

 

That's  5 schools from different parts of the country, with 80 total draft eligible players, of whom 16 got drafted -- over half of them from a single power house school.  If that pattern generalizes over the roughly 300 D1 schools that means on the order of 20% will get drafted.   Of course, as you yourself point out, the attrition along the way is not insignificant.  So even if you land a D1 spot, you have to run the gauntlet before becoming draft eligible. 

 

Last edited by SluggerDad
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