Here is a site with a current list of underclassmen who have declared for the 2013 NFL draft:
http://www.draftcountdown.com/features/Underclassmen.php
For discussion purposes here is an interesting observation:
What percentage of NFL players are college graduates?
Percent of NFL Players that are College Graduates
The months of May and June are the days I dedicate to the youth of America who love the game of football. I'm out every week talking with high school-aged people who are chasing the dream of a football career. While I don't want them to lose sight of their dreams, I do want them to know how to make good decisions while they go through the process.
This year, my main message will be about the college players who leave school early in hopes of starting up their pro careers. I'm not sure they get all the facts before they decide to leave their education behind. This year, with all the attention about this issue, I thought it was time to discuss it.
I teach a class in the distinguished graduate program for sports business at NYU. I have a number of very talented young people on the verge of challenging careers in the sports industry. One lawyer in my class, Gene Caiola, has been helping me research the history of underclassmen who have entered the draft. Here's some food for thought from some of our recent studies:
Since 1990, 479 underclassmen have applied for the draft, and 332 of them were actually drafted. Seventy percent got selected, which doesn't sound bad until you stop and think about the 30 percent who gave up the opportunity for a college degree and landed up with a rookie minimum contract ... or no contract at all. Only 131 were selected in the first round.
I can see the rationale these young men considered when they left school. In my opinion,
only 27 percent of the underclassmen who declared for the draft since 1990 made a good decision about their football careers.
But forget football for a second. All of these 479 young people quit on their education. In my 10 years in the NFL, I didn't see many of them return for a degree. They all talk about returning to school some day, but without a scholarship, the study halls and the tutoring they had when on the college football team, it is unrealistic to think it will ever happen.Here are some numbers to ponder:
A college graduate who never makes a living in the NFL will get cut, go home and on average make over $600,000 more money over his chosen career than the guy without a degree who gets cut. These players are abandoning a free college education to go pro even though the chances of lasting four years in the NFL is less than 20 percent.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_percentage_of_NFL_players_are_college_graduates
