The draft system, Part 1

Every year in America, in every major sport, comes the draft. For those unfamiliar with the system, it works like this: Every year, newcomers to proffesional sports from schools, colleges etc. are spread out among the various teams, each team getting a pick of who they want and the teams that did worst the previous year get the first pick to try to keep things interesting by giving smaller teams a chance. Although there are problems with the system (good players leaving weak teams once their alloted time is up, teams intentionally coming last to get better picks) for the most part, it works to prevent rich teams buying up all the new talent and stop "juggernaut teams" from existing.


But if it's so prevealent in North American sports, why is the idea almost non-existant elsewhere?

Especially in the English Premier League, where the dominance of the "big four" is often criticised, would a draft system not be the perfect solution? The answer is that the way young athletes are trained to become proffessionals in America is different to how they are trained in other places, and the structure of proffessional sports is different also.


For a start, all the teams in the NBA, NFL, and MBL are contained within North America and only play in those leagues. Football and rugby clubs in Europe and other places typically play in at least 2 tournaments at a time. (Premier League and FA cup, Guinness Premiership/Magners League and Heineken cup). Even the amateur GAA in Ireland has both a league and a cup each year, watched by thousands. Which organization would run the draft system, and would countries have to give their players to clubs from other countries, which could hinder the club game in that country, with knock-on effects on the international team?


It's notable that one of the only other places that uses a draft system is the AFL in Australia: another league where all the competition are in one country with little to no international competition. Perhaps a draft system naturally comes about when sports are popular in one area, isolated, and proffessional? (it should be noted that although the GAA is very popular and televised to huge audiences, it is amateur and based explicity on the idea of "play for where you're from")

But even within countries, there is the problem that in America, incoming proffessional athletes are trained up in High school and college before going proffessional. In European and other clubs, traing comes from Youth Academies. It makes no sense to expect Chelsea to train up a great new player only to have to give him to Everton when the draft comes. Even the training secondary schools in Ireland give to rugby players is soon supplanted by academy training, and coollege rugby is taken much less seriously.

The idea of the draft seems kind of contrary to the famously capitalist American society. Giving weak teams better players for their weakness is opposed to the notion that those who are rich deserve all the rewards. But it turns out there are good reasons why the system evolved here and not in other places, while also showing that sometimes the attitude of a society towards sport is different to it's attitude as a whole.
Thanks to pac10.wordpress.com for picture