Is it time for the NFL to start a minor league system?

NoXInNixon

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For a while I've wondered why there's no minor league system for the NFL. Reading this column on The Ringer put that thought back in my head:

https://theringer.com/the-nfl-has-an-age-problem-7068825845e4#.xmj8r38w1

Basically, the NFL has used the NCAA as its de facto minor league system, but that approach has major flaws. The goal of a minor league system is to develop players, but the goal of a big time college football program is to win. Those goals are often at odds with each other. Also, given how much damage playing football at any level does to the human body, these kids are wasting prime football playing years not getting paid anything.

Has the NFL ever looked into a minor league? One big problem would be the numbers. It would be tricky for each NFL team to fill a full 53 man roster for a minor league team. Or maybe they would, if you took away the practice squad and made the minor league team fill the same role. The minor league team and major league team would practice together.

Why isn't this being done?
 

Dollar

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With the NFL looking to expand to Europe and everywhere else in the world, I'm kind of surprised they haven't brought back the idea of an NFL Europe to develop players and spread the game internationally. The NFL is already a lot more popular here in Germany than I thought it would be.
 

Super Nomario

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For a while I've wondered why there's no minor league system for the NFL. Reading this column on The Ringer put that thought back in my head:

https://theringer.com/the-nfl-has-an-age-problem-7068825845e4#.xmj8r38w1

Basically, the NFL has used the NCAA as its de facto minor league system, but that approach has major flaws. The goal of a minor league system is to develop players, but the goal of a big time college football program is to win. Those goals are often at odds with each other. Also, given how much damage playing football at any level does to the human body, these kids are wasting prime football playing years not getting paid anything.

Has the NFL ever looked into a minor league? One big problem would be the numbers. It would be tricky for each NFL team to fill a full 53 man roster for a minor league team. Or maybe they would, if you took away the practice squad and made the minor league team fill the same role. The minor league team and major league team would practice together.

Why isn't this being done?
They had NFL Europe for 15 years, but they shut it down in 2007 because it was losing $30 MM / year. Running a football team / league is expensive so it's hard to pull off. The NCAA isn't ideal for development but from the NFL's perspective, it's free.

I think most NFL teams would rather develop their players with them in practice. Training is so scheme-specific; it would be hard to build mixed teams from different organizations like the NBA D-League has. And teams are not going to have a full 53-man group to run a backup team, nor would they have a backup set of coaches to coaches, nor would they want to pay for that.

The easiest solution is probably to expand the size of the practice squad by another 5-10, which will let guys hang around teams and weight rooms and film rooms and practice and develop. It might even makes sense to place no hard limit on the size of the PS. Practically speaking, a team isn't going to want 45 guys on the PS because even giving them practice reps is going to take away from their players under contract, and they don't fully control PS guys anyway so other teams could still sign them away. Why not let teams decide whether they want 10 or 15 or 20 practice squad guys?

The other idea that makes sense to me is kind of a short-term, low-key developmental league, sort of a cross between the Senior Bowl and baseball's extending spring training. It would run for like a month concurrent with the beginning of the season. Build 2-4 teams out of guys who are cut during the preseason, pair them with coaches who are out of the league but want to get back in (like, Tom Coughlin) and up-and-coming coach-types who don't have gigs, and give them like 3-4 weeks of training / development and run a couple scrimmages where you don't really care if fans come. The costs would be fairly modest, it would provide some opportunity for players and coaches, teams would split costs and then scout the practices / scrimmages to sign guys as openings become available.

ITP produced a Podcast run by The Scouting Academy's Dan Hatman where Amy Trask, Geoff Schwartz, and John Peterson discussed NCAA as a farm system, if you're interested in further material: http://insidethepylon.com/football-podcast/2016/07/13/football-think-tank-podcast-college-football-as-the-nfls-farm-system/
 

Pxer

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The NFL should buy the CFL, revamp the rules, and use it as a feeder system.
 

NoXInNixon

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Expanding the practice squad is a good idea, but doesn't alone solve the problem. It's a service time problem. You have only four years to get value out of your drafted players, which means you can't keep a guy with real potential in there using up his rookie contract.

So what if you made it so that time on the practice squad didn't count against a player's first contract? You could draft a kid right out of college, have him play on the practice squad for three years and then when he's ready to make the 53 man roster his rookie clock starts.
 

Pxer

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Such a player will be low-cost in FA if he's on the PS for so long. Delaying his rookie contract makes the rookie slave labor arrangement worse.

They make a lot less money on the PS vs. the roster as it is.
 

Super Nomario

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Expanding the practice squad is a good idea, but doesn't alone solve the problem. It's a service time problem. You have only four years to get value out of your drafted players, which means you can't keep a guy with real potential in there using up his rookie contract.

So what if you made it so that time on the practice squad didn't count against a player's first contract? You could draft a kid right out of college, have him play on the practice squad for three years and then when he's ready to make the 53 man roster his rookie clock starts.
What you describe is how things are now. Teams have to waive players before they put them on the practice squad, so they're not on their rookie contracts when they're on PS.
 

PayrodsFirstClutchHit

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The NFL should buy the CFL, revamp the rules, and use it as a feeder system.
The NFL signed a record number of CFL players (16) last year according the article below. I am not sure if they need to get rid of the rouge or add a 4th down to see who has the basic talent to make it in the NFL.

http://www.americanfootballinternational.com/record-migration-cfl-players-headed-nfl/

The CFL is a kind of a feeder system for players that do not make the initial cut with NFL teams. It would seem that the league is more interested in refilling from the college ranks versus scouting talent that did not make the cut the first time.
 

Pxer

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The NFL signed a record number of CFL players (16) last year according the article below. I am not sure if they need to get rid of the rouge or add a 4th down to see who has the basic talent to make it in the NFL.

http://www.americanfootballinternational.com/record-migration-cfl-players-headed-nfl/

The CFL is a kind of a feeder system for players that do not make the initial cut with NFL teams. It would seem that the league is more interested in refilling from the college ranks versus scouting talent that did not make the cut the first time.
I think the quality of the league suffers a little because of that -- I'd wager that a lot of NFL talent gives up too early on their football careers due to economics.

Of course, I'm sure it's not cost-effective to make a feeder league that pays non-NFLers a better wage.
 

P'tucket rhymes with...

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I don't really get the assumption that the NFL might be particularly interested in throwing any money at the problems outlined in the Ringer article until Joe Tailgater and his buddies stop watching and buying merchandise. They can (truthfully) claim to have the monopoly on the best 1500-1600 players in the game season over season. That's enough for the majority of fans, even if it's theoretically possible for those guys to be better than they are.

The other way you can raise the level of play is to decrease the violence in the game so players with experience don't break down as quickly, although the league's farcical "Concussion Protocol" tells us they're as committed to doing that only to the extent that it makes for good public relations, and not an inch farther.
 

Hoodie Sleeves

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They had NFL Europe for 15 years, but they shut it down in 2007 because it was losing $30 MM / year. Running a football team / league is expensive so it's hard to pull off. The NCAA isn't ideal for development but from the NFL's perspective, it's free.
30M a year is such a small amount of money that I doubt it's the primary reason NFL Europe went away. I think it's more likely that they didn't think they were getting anything out of NFL Europe - it wasn't helping them get a foothold, it wasn't competitive enough to produce talent, etc.

Minor league baseball employs roughly 5000 minor league players (excluding 40 man roster players) who average about $8000 a year each, so I don't think a minor league would be prohibitively expensive. It's probably more that the liability isn't worth it with the current NCAA system in place.
 

Nator

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Here's my half-baked idea. Let's remove the charade of student athletes playing football, and just call all the college football teams minor league teams sponsored by the university.

You can keep the names, let players who join the teams be compensated with some money and/or the ability to attend classes on a discount or scholarship if they want to (rather than majoring in "recreational facilities management" or some farcical major), or let them just focus on football.

"The Crimson Tide, sponsored by the University of Alabama". I would guess that most of the hillbillies would still just call them 'Bama anyway.

I'll try to hash the rest of this idea out a bit later when I have some more time.
 

bakahump

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Or better yet, the NFL should just move to CFL rules and field size. Right now it is a better game with lesser players, IMO.
I have mentioned this before. I asked at the time if anyone thought it might also make the game slightly safer (more space and only 3 downs so less running plays).

Cant remember if any agreed or thought I was crazy, but it would be interesting to see if Concussions are as prevalent in the CFL.
 

Saints Rest

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Here's my half-baked idea. Let's remove the charade of student athletes playing football, and just call all the college football teams minor league teams sponsored by the university.

You can keep the names, let players who join the teams be compensated with some money and/or the ability to attend classes on a discount or scholarship if they want to (rather than majoring in "recreational facilities management" or some farcical major), or let them just focus on football.

"The Crimson Tide, sponsored by the University of Alabama". I would guess that most of the hillbillies would still just call them 'Bama anyway.

I'll try to hash the rest of this idea out a bit later when I have some more time.
I threw this idea out a year or so ago with the idea that the various conferences could become like the different levels of minors. Thus there would be 32 teams each level, with connections to each NFL team. So maybe BC is the Pats AAA team, UConn is AA, UMass is A. Or maybe no geographical connection as the top college programs tend to be where there are no NFL teams. But the idea remains. It would also mean that players would likely be transferring schools as they go thru school, but since they would be employed by the team, there is much less issue with eligibility or pseudo-academia.
 

bowiac

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I threw this idea out a year or so ago with the idea that the various conferences could become like the different levels of minors. Thus there would be 32 teams each level, with connections to each NFL team. So maybe BC is the Pats AAA team, UConn is AA, UMass is A. Or maybe no geographical connection as the top college programs tend to be where there are no NFL teams. But the idea remains. It would also mean that players would likely be transferring schools as they go thru school, but since they would be employed by the team, there is much less issue with eligibility or pseudo-academia.
Part of the reason NCAA football is a successful product financially is because it's not just a developmental program for the NFL. Teams are trying to win, not just develop pro talent, there is continuity, recruiting, playing time battles, etc... I suspect all of these reasons are salient to why NCAA football is orders of magnitude bigger than minor league baseball.

Why would schools want to sign up for this minor league system? It's hard to imagine the NFL could make it lucrative enough.
 

crystalline

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I don't really get the assumption that the NFL might be particularly interested in throwing any money at the problems outlined in the Ringer article until Joe Tailgater and his buddies stop watching and buying merchandise.
Plus any smart owner is now in a cash-milking phase. We are at "peak NFL".
 

Infield Infidel

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The other idea that makes sense to me is kind of a short-term, low-key developmental league, sort of a cross between the Senior Bowl and baseball's extending spring training. It would run for like a month concurrent with the beginning of the season. Build 2-4 teams out of guys who are cut during the preseason, pair them with coaches who are out of the league but want to get back in (like, Tom Coughlin) and up-and-coming coach-types who don't have gigs, and give them like 3-4 weeks of training / development and run a couple scrimmages where you don't really care if fans come. The costs would be fairly modest, it would provide some opportunity for players and coaches, teams would split costs and then scout the practices / scrimmages to sign guys as openings become available.
I had a similar idea, a 4-8 team U-23 league, but in the spring, 6-8 games in March-April, so it would feed right into the draft. with 50 guys per roster it'd only be 200-400 players. The players would be guys who didn't want to go to college. They could put teams in NFL markets that don't have basketball or hockey, so they wouldn't have much in-market competition: Cincinnati, Seattle, Jacksonville, San Diego, Kansas City, Baltimore.
The NFL wants to be a year round league, this would provide some product (although I think they want to be year-round with minimal product).
 

crystalline

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To be fair, I think we're in phase one of "post peak NFL". But that could just be my bias.
Indeed.

Apparently ratings were down for the NFL opener this year, for the first time in a long time. Before I'd agree to "post-peak" I'd like to see the market breakdown, and try to infer whether the day of week had a big effect. But you may well be right.
 

OCST

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Here's my half-baked idea. Let's remove the charade of student athletes playing football, and just call all the college football teams minor league teams sponsored by the university.

You can keep the names, let players who join the teams be compensated with some money and/or the ability to attend classes on a discount or scholarship if they want to (rather than majoring in "recreational facilities management" or some farcical major), or let them just focus on football.

"The Crimson Tide, sponsored by the University of Alabama". I would guess that most of the hillbillies would still just call them 'Bama anyway.

I'll try to hash the rest of this idea out a bit later when I have some more time.
I've been saying this for years.
 

speedracer

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Doubt it'd ever happen, but I'd love to see a Pats academy that churns out slot receivers and pass-catching backs the way Barcelona churns out playmaking midfielders.