User:Propaniac/nfl

Eligibility
The draft is the first chance teams get to conduct contract negotiations with players who have been out of high school for three years. Most drafted players come directly out of NCAA programs as seniors or juniors, all players entering the draft must have at least three years of college experience, while some players are selected from other professional leagues like the Arena Football League. All players who choose to enter the selected year's draft must sign an agent prior to entering the draft. A player who is drafted but does not sign a contract can sit out that season, which is referred to as a "holdout", and can re-enter the draft the following year unless he is told differently by the NFL commissioner.

Format and order
The draft includes seven rounds. The order in which teams make their picks in each round is based on each team's performance in the previous season, and is determined as follows:


 * 1) Any expansion team automatically gets the first pick. If there are two expansion teams, a coin toss determines who picks first; the other team will pick first in the expansion draft.


 * 1) Following any expansion teams, teams that did not make the playoffs are ordered by their regular-season record, with the first pick going to the team with the worst record.


 * 1) Teams that made the playoffs are then ordered by their playoff performance. The four teams who lost in the wild card round pick first, followed by the four teams who lost in the divisional round, followed by the two teams who lost in the conference championships.


 * 1) The losing Super Bowl team is given the penultimate selection.


 * 1) The winning Super Bowl team is given the final selection.


 * 1) In the first round, ties between teams in each category are broken by strength of schedule. For draft order, a lower strength of schedule results in an earlier pick. If strength of schedule does not resolve a tie, division and/or conference tiebreakers may be used. If the tie still cannot be broken, a coin toss at the NFL Combine is used to determine draft order. (Note: Strength of schedule is the combined records of a team's 16 opponents, including games played against the team in question, and counting divisional opponents twice. Because of this, each team's opponents' combined wins and losses—counting a tie as a half-win, half-loss—will add up to 256, so a team whose opponents had more combined wins has a better strength of schedule.)


 * 1) In subsequent rounds, teams with tied records will rotate the order of their picks in each subsequent round, regardless of playoff status or any other factor (except that the Super Bowl teams will always pick last in every round). For example, in the 2008 draft, Arizona, Minnesota, Houston, and Philadelphia all finished 8-8, and picked in that order in the first round. In the second round, the order became Minnesota, Houston, Philadelphia, and Arizona. That cycling continues through all seven rounds.