The History of the NFL Draft: Spectacle, Awe and Sports

The full history of the NFL Draft, including a number of incredible facts. In the first 69 drafts, 15 Hall of Famers were selected with the no. 1 overall pick. The best stretch of no. 1 picks came between 1964-1971. Three of the eight selections were elected into the Hall of Fame, including Ron Yary, O.J. Simpson and Terry Bradshaw. Four of the others made the Pro Bowl and the last one, Jim Plunkett, quarterbacked two teams to a Super Bowl title and was the game’s MVP once.

In the early 1930s, Stan Kostka had an incredible college career as the University of Minnesota’s running back, leading the Golden Gophers to an undefeated season in 1934. Every NFL team wanted to sign him. Since there was no draft back then, savvy Stan did the smart thing, and he held out for the highest offer.

While a free agent, Stan kept busy, even running for Mayor of Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota. Stan’s nine-month NFL holdout succeeded and he became the league’s highest-paid player, signing a $5,000 contract with the NFL team in Brooklyn, New York on August 25th, 1935.

As a response to the bidding war for Stan Kostka, the NFL instituted the draft in 1936.

Players signed with teams that offered the most money, or if the money being equal, players chose to sign with the most prestigious teams at the time, who had established a winning tradition. As a result, the NFL was dominated by the Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers, New York Giants, and Washington Redskins.

Eventually the ownership of the franchise teams became convinced the only way for the NFL to have enduring success was for all teams to have an equal opportunity to sign eligible players. At a league meeting on May 18th, 1935, the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles proposed a draft be instituted to enhance the possibility of competitive parity on the field. His proposal was adopted unanimously that day.

Six no. 1 picks have quarterbacked their teams to a Super Bowl title

Those quarterbacks were Joe Namath, Terry Bradshaw, Jim Plunkett, Troy Aikman, John Elway, Peyton Manning and Eli Manning. The lowest drafted quarterback to win a Super Bowl is Bart Starr, who was taken no. 200 overall in 1956. That’s one spot lower than Tom Brady, who went no. 199 in the 2000 draft. Then there’s Kurt Warner, who wasn’t taken at all in 1994 and went on to win a Super Bowl six years later.

The first NFL draft began at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia on February 8th, 1936. Ninety names were written on a blackboard in the meeting room from which the teams would choose. As no team had a scouting department, the list was created from either print media sources, visits to local colleges by team executives, or by recommendations to team executives. The draft would last for nine rounds, and it had no media coverage.

The first player ever selected in the draft was Jay Berwanger. The draft was recessed on the first day and it was continued and finished on the next day.

Art Rooney, owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, chose Byron “Whizzer” White in the first round of the 1938 draft despite White’s known public declaration that he would not play professional football and would instead begin work on his Rhodes scholarship. White did, however, agree to play for the 1938 season after Rooney publicly gave him a guaranteed contract of $15,000, double what any other player had ever made in the NFL.

In 1944, the Eagles used their 20th-round pick on Syracuse fullback Norm Michael

But Philadelphia was unable to contact him because he’d enlisted in the Army soon after college. It wasn’t until 55 years later, when he was flipping through his local paper, that an elderly Michael saw a list of every Syracuse player selected by the NFL and learned he had once been drafted by an NFL Franchise.

The draft would be eventually codified into the NFL Constitution, although no information is available on when that originally occurred.

The NFL’s competition with the AAFC in 1947 resulted in a temporary institution of a bonus pick.

In the thirteenth round, George Taliaferro became the first African-American selected when he was chosen in the 1949 NFL draft. He however, chose to sign with an AAFC team. Wally Triplett was chosen in the nineteenth and he would be the first African-American to be selected in the draft and make an NFL team.

The 1960 NFL Draft marked a turning point in the draft’s history because of the pending arrival of the American Football League (AFL), as it became a “high-stakes, competitive affair.” In 1976, former NFL wide receiver Paul Salata first coined the moniker “Mr. Irrelevant” to refer to the last overall player selected in the draft.

In 1980, Chet Simmons, president of the year-old ESPN, asked Pete Rozelle if the fledgling network could broadcast coverage of the draft live on ESPN. Although Rozelle did not believe it would be entertaining television, he agreed. In 1988, the NFL moved the draft from weekdays to the weekend and ESPN’s ratings of the coverage improved dramatically.

In 2006, ESPN received competition when the NFL Network, which had launched in October of 2003, began to produce its own draft coverage. In 2010, the NFL moved to a three-day draft with the first day encompassing the first round beginning at 8:00pm Thursday, the second day encompassing the second and third rounds beginning at 7:00pm Friday, and third day concluding the process with the final four rounds beginning at 11:00am Saturday.

In the 2018 NFL Draft, the first two evenings aired on broadcast television, with Fox and NFL Network carrying a simulcast featuring personnel from both the NFL Network and Fox Sports.

This article is comprised of information and media from the Sporting Report, espn.com, and thespun.com. For more sports, news and entertainment, follow us on Twitter @MWSNsports or like our page on Facebook.