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The best players are in the NFL (age 22 and up), but 99.99% of them played college football in the NCAA (between ages 18-23).Originally Posted by July Fourth
The typical path of an NFL player....
You play youth football as a kid (Pop Warner is a popular organization...the Little Leauge (baseball) of football, if you get that reference). You pay a few bucks to join the leauge. You play outside of school against other kids in the community.
When you are a teenager, you play high school football. You play for the school you go to for grades 9-12. If you are good, college coaches will recruit you and try to convince you to come to their school. You then sign with your college. A high school graduate is usually 18 years old.
You go to college/university (the terms basically mean the same thing in the US) for 3 to 5 years. The maximum you can play is four years. Some players train for a year with their team but don't appear in any games (known as redshirting....if you redshirt a year, you can still play for 4 years). Really good players won't redshirt and they may leave college after 3 years. Most stay for 4 or 5 years. Players leave college when they are 22 or 23. If they want to keep playing, they apply for the NFL draft.
The NFL holds a draft in the spring. Anyone who is 3 years past their high school graduation can apply. Teams then pick players for seven rounds. The team that picks first is the worst team from the previous season. So, the best players from college go to the worst teams in the NFL to try to improve them. The team that drafts you is the only one that can sign you to a contract. The player has no say in what team he plays for. After a few seasons and your contract expires you can sign with another team as a free agent. If a player is never drafted, he can be signed as a free agent too.
Other notes:
All of the US 4 main sports use the draft concept. It helps to prevent dynasties. It helps smaller market teams get good players. So, it helps prevent situations like Manchester United getting the best young players. Since free agency exists, teams that have more money can spend for older, better players when their contract is finished with their older team as a way to improve their team. So, US teams can be like Man U and spend alot of money to get good players. If you pay attention to US sports, you will notice that there is alot more turnover at the top and who our champions are. Its not like the Premier League being dominated by Man U and with only 4 others getting a chance to win the title.
NCAA is the main league for college sports. It has 4 levels for football. In order from best to worst: Division I - FBS, Division I - FCS, Divsion II, and Division III. Division I - FBS is the one that gets 95% of the media coverage (games on tv, sports recap shows, talk on sports radio). The teams at a certain level join a conference so you have common opponents every year. You also get to pick a choose some out of conference opponents. Division I - FBS has all of the popular universities (like Notre Dame, Alabama, USC, Michigan). They spend the most on football (but you can't pay the players), have the biggest stadiums and get the best high school players by offering them a scholarship to their school (the scholarship gives them a free education). The maximum scholarship players on the team is 85. Division I-FCS is the next step below. They spend less, don't have as good players, and only get 65 scholarships. Division II offers less. Divsion III offers none. Most Division I - FBS schools play 1 Division I - FCS school each year. Those games have scores around 70 -7 (which would by like 10-1 in soccer).
If you were wondering: Division I - FBS stands for football bowl subdivision and Division I - FCS stands for football championship subdivision. FBS schools play in bowls at the end of the regular season. The Rose bowl, sugar bowl, Orange bowl, and Fiesta bowls are the biggest. The bowls invite champions or runner-ups of conferences to play just 1 postseason game. Fans didn't like this because #1 and #2 weren't playing each other in the postseason, so about ten years ago the BCS championship game was invented to be a national championship game. FCS schools play a knockout tournament at the end of the season to determine the champion.
Schools are allowed to change levels. To "move up" from Division I - FCS to Divsion I - FBS, you need to have a certain amount of fans at home games, a certain size stadium, a certain number of ther sports at your university that you offer scholarships for (basketball, soccer, track and field, lacrosse, swimming, etc), and of course money. It is sort of like being promoted, but its not based on onfield performance. There is no promotion or regulation on the US professional sports.
How NCAA conferences work:
Take Michigan University for example. They are in the Big 10, which has, ironically, 12 teams. The Big 10 just expanded and added 2 new schools to get to 14. (Over the past 4 years, a lot of schools have changed conferences). Those teams play against each other. If Michigan wins the Big 10, they advance to the Rose Bowl to play the winner of the Pac-12. If they are ranked #1 or 2, they go to the BCS championship game. In a few years this will change and become a 4 team play-off. In other sports, like basketball (March madness, the NCAA tournament for Division I (no FBS or FCS subdivsions in baskeball)), a knockout tournament is played at the end of the season to determine the national champion.
hope that helps some (and if you were wondering, yes I'm American, yes I like soccer...and if anyone wondered if the World Cup in the US in 94 led to American fans, I'm one of them.) Watched every World Cup since then, the last two Euros, been to 2 Gold Cup matchs in the US, and watch the occasional EPL game when I can catch them on ESPN (the main EPL contract is with Fox Soccer channel, which I don't get).
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