[ColoradoTree]

Someone else said this, but I think it beats repeating. The NFL and NCAA should allow those with eligibility that want to test the NFL waters to do so.  Have a specified date in which they have to fish or cut bait.  After the combine perhaps. (In years they have one).  That allows the player to get some sense of his draft stock.

But of  course that  would be the best thing for the player and neither are the NCAA nor the NFL often care  about that

I'll go further and say that if a kid leaves early and goes undrafted, he can either try the UDFA route and try and make a roster or he can choose to come back--if the school has a scholarship for him and wants him to return. The draft is humbling for a lot of young men who have been told they're NFL material and that they'll be a star, only for seven rounds to go by without hearing their names called. I don't care if they've signed with an agent, let them walk that mistake back (after they pay back whatever they may have received). Especially this year, where different season lengths make the evaluation process that much harder and more imprecise than it already is.

I guess I'm just not mad at a young man who dreams of playing in the NFL, hears lots of whispers about where he might end up in the draft, and then gets disappointed, left without the promising career he thought he'd have. Assuming it works for the school to welcome that young man back into the program, why not let him come back? 

Now, there are going to be plenty of times where it doesn't work--e.g., the school has moved on and promised that scholarship to a new recruit, the bridges got burned on the way out, the player is scheduled to finish his undergraduate degree that spring and didn't apply to any graduate programs, etc. And that's fine! That's life. And I can see the concern that every third-year player with any chance of a NFL career is going to declare and go through the draft process, just to see what happens, knowing they can come back if they don't get drafted. (I'm not sure how realistic that concern is, though--getting tagged as an UDFA-caliber guy is going to stick with you, and I would think players would be motivated to avoid that situation, especially knowing they could lose their spot at their school in the meantime. But even if this proves to be a problem, I don't see it as an unsolvable one.)

But in the end, a kid declaring early and then going undrafted is a failure. It's his failure, sure, but also a systemic one. So why not show grace and give the kid a chance to come back and prove the NFL teams wrong? In those narrow circumstances, I don't see that letting him come back for another year is an affront to amateurism or the collegiate athletic model.

[ColoradoTree]

Someone else said this, but I think it beats repeating. The NFL and NCAA should allow those with eligibility that want to test the NFL waters to do so.  Have a specified date in which they have to fish or cut bait.  After the combine perhaps. (In years they have one).  That allows the player to get some sense of his draft stock.

But of  course that  would be the best thing for the player and neither are the NCAA nor the NFL often care  about that

I'll go further and say that if a kid leaves early and goes undrafted, he can either try the UDFA route and try and make a roster or he can choose to come back--if the school has a scholarship for him and wants him to return. The draft is humbling for a lot of young men who have been told they're NFL material and that they'll be a star, only for seven rounds to go by without hearing their names called. I don't care if they've signed with an agent, let them walk that mistake back (after they pay back whatever they may have received). Especially this year, where different season lengths make the evaluation process that much harder and more imprecise than it already is.

I guess I'm just not mad at a young man who dreams of playing in the NFL, hears lots of whispers about where he might end up in the draft, and then gets disappointed, left without the promising career he thought he'd have. Assuming it works for the school to welcome that young man back into the program, why not let him come back? 

Now, there are going to be plenty of times where it doesn't work--e.g., the school has moved on and promised that scholarship to a new recruit, the bridges got burned on the way out, the player is scheduled to finish his undergraduate degree that spring and didn't apply to any graduate programs, etc. And that's fine! That's life. And I can see the concern that every third-year player with any chance of a NFL career is going to declare and go through the draft process, just to see what happens, knowing they can come back if they don't get drafted. (I'm not sure how realistic that concern is, though--getting tagged as an UDFA-caliber guy is going to stick with you, and I would think players would be motivated to avoid that situation, especially knowing they could lose their spot at their school in the meantime. But even if this proves to be a problem, I don't see it as an unsolvable one.)

But in the end, a kid declaring early and then going undrafted is a failure. It's his failure, sure, but also a systemic one. So why not show grace and give the kid a chance to come back and prove the NFL teams wrong? In those narrow circumstances, I don't see that letting him come back for another year is an affront to amateurism or the collegiate athletic model.