History
At a meeting on May 19, 1935, National Football League owners approved a plan for a draft of college players following the 1936 season. Under the plan, proposed by Philadelphia Eagles' owner Bert Bell (who later became NFL commissioner), teams drafted in reverse order of their finish.
There were nine rounds in the first draft, which was held in February of 1936. That was increased to 10 rounds for the league's second draft, which took place in December of 1936, shortly after the season ended. From 1938 through 1944, only the five teams with the poorest records were given choices in the second and fourth rounds of the draft.
The number of rounds increased to 20 in 1939 and to 30 in 1943. In 1949, that was cut to 25, but it went to 30 again in 1950, then back to 20 in 1960. There were 17 rounds from 1967 through 1976 and 12 rounds from 1977 through 1992.
Under the collective bargaining agreement signed with the NFL Players Association in 1993, the draft was cut to 8 rounds that year and to 7 rounds in 1994.
In 1947, the NFL added a bonus selection, the first pick in the draft. The team with the bonus selection was chosen in a special lottery. Each team was eligible to have the bonus pick just once. That was dropped after the 1958 draft; by then, each team in the league had exercised the bonus selection once.
The draft, of course, is now held in late April and enveloped in an aura of hype, preceded by mock drafts conducted by a variety of media outlets and organizations and followed by stories of multi-million-dollar, multi-year contracts.
At various times, though, the NFL has staged a much earlier draft, often in secrecy, because of competition with other leagues. From 1947 through 1949, secret drafts were held to prevent teams in the rival All-America Football Conference from knowing which NFL teams they were competing with for specific players.
During the late 1950s, the Canadian Football League began an effort to sign college stars from the United States. The NFL responded by holding early drafts from the 1956 through 1959, with the first four rounds in late November or early December and rounds 5 through 30 in January.
Early drafts were staged in secret during the early 1960s, when the rival American Football League was competing with the NFL for players. In 1966, the NFL and AFL agreed to merge beginning with the 1970 season, and they also agreed to begin holding a common draft in 1967, ending competition for players.
The basic purpose of the draft is to help poorer teams improve themselves by giving them higher (i.e., lower-numbered) draft picks. However, draft choices are also used as rewards and, sometimes, as punishment.
Although it doesn't often happen, a team can be penalized for certain violations of the NFL by-laws by having a draft choice taken away. And, since 1993, teams have been given compensatory draft picks for the loss of free agents. Those picks usually show up at the end of the third round and at the end of the entire draft, although they can be allotted anywhere from the third round to the seventh.
The NFL also holds a little-publicized supplementary draft in July for players who, for some reason, weren't eligible for the April draft. The supplementary draft is conducted in exactly the same way as the main draft, but teams will usually pass through at least the first round or two, because any pick used here is forfeited in the following year's regular draft. In 2002, there was a supplementary draft for four players, and none of them was chosen at all.
Because of compensatory draft choices and picks that may have been forfeited, not all draft rounds have the same number of selections. There are always more picks in third and seventh rounds, with the seventh begin the largest.