The long road to become a NFL player and how quick it goes

Let’s consider what it takes for an NFL player to make it to the pros.  Most athletes start playing sports from a young age and begin playing organized sports at around age 8.  This begins the weekly process of practices and games which will last for the rest of their career.  By the time they reach junior high, they are practicing every day after school for 2 or more hours, after which they go home, eat, and then have homework to finish.  This becomes even more time consuming in high school, where practices are longer and harder and there are often games or practices on the weekends, and even more homework.  There is also the pressure to perform, put in extra time in the weight room, and working out in the off season to stay in shape.  By the time these players make it to college they have already put in thousands of hours of practice time, suffered injuries, played through pain, and made sacrifices in other areas of their lives. Yet only about 3-4 percent of high school football players play in college, where practice and games begin almost before classes, and players are only allowed one day off per week, which means coaches can’t officially hold practice but that doesn’t mean you aren’t expected to be in the weight room or running, watching game film, etc.  The pressure to perform is even greater, for if you fail on the field or in the classroom, your college and football career could be immediately over.  The majority of college players will spend 4-5 years dedicating themselves to football yet most of them don’t make it into the pros. According to The Economics of Player Salaries There are about 25,300 college football players and only 224 NFL players are drafted every year. Of those 224 drafted some of them still never make a NFL roster as they are often cut in the preseason. The precious few players who make an NFL roster could see their career end at any time. A NFL player’s average career length is only about 3.5 years but players like Brett Favre and the few who end up playing 15 plus years make that number misleading.  If you consider that most students coming out of college are looking at a career that will last at least 40 years, even 15 seems like a relatively short amount of time for a career.   Most players spend their whole life to get to the NFL only to see their dream end before their 4-year rookie contract ends, during which time they are only making a minimum salary. An Athlete could spend his whole life on a career that last only four years and making about 375,000 to 500,000 a year (some rookies make more but most are in this range) it may seem like a lot but when their career ends at only 25 years old and they have to use that money for the rest of their life, it isn’t very much. This is why you hear many football players file for bankruptcy or go broke, years after they retire. Why don’t they make a rookie contract one year so the player can make millions of dollars while he can still play? Why don’t they let football players play in the NFL after one year of college like the NBA does, so they could spend more time in the NFL and make more money? Are NFL players underpaid because of their sort career, or are young players underpaid and veteran that make 20 million a year overpaid? Should they put a limit on how much a player can make a year so younger players could get paid more?

Only .08 percent of high school football players and 1.7 percent of college player make the NFL. Athlete who spend all their time trying to make the NFL and only 1.7 percent of them make it.