Just like Cinderella teams have become less of a factor at the NCAA men's basketball tournament, fewer longshots are reaching the NFL draft from small schools.
Blame NIL riches and the crowded transfer portal, a combination that has led to a concentration of talent in the power conferences.
The SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 dominate college football, commanding higher revenue, better television ratings and bigger budgets.
And more and more, they're siphoning
stars from the nonpower leagues.
“Jerry Rice still gets drafted by the 49ers, but I don’t know that it’s from Mississippi Valley State today,” Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton said of the Hall of Fame wide receiver who had one of the biggest rags-to-riches journeys in league history. “That’s where he started, but I think it may be from — pick a big school.”
March Madness used to regularly feature little-known schools from look-it-up locales that rose from obscurity to capture the hearts of hoops fans and bust so many brackets. But last year, all 16 regional semifinalists hailed from power conferences, including the Big East, for the first time since the bracket expanded to 64 teams in 1985. The same thing happened this year, suggesting the transfer portal has led to a concentration of the best players at the big schools with the most NIL money.
What has transpired on the hardwood is manifesting itself on the gridiron in its own way.
Consider: Only 24 of the 257 players selected in the NFL draft last year came from nonpower conferences. That continued a trend since 2022, when 70 draftees came from nonpower conferences. That number dipped to 38 in 2023, then to 34 in 2024.
And those figures are boosted by players who may not hail from power conferences but certainly played for college powerhouses. The two nonpower school first-rounders last year were Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty, who was selected sixth overall by Las Vegas, and North Dakota State guard Grey Zabel, who was drafted 18th by Seattle.
Boise State has long been a powerhouse program, producing seven NFL draft picks since 2021, and the North Dakota State Bison have won 18 national championships, including 10 FCS titles since 2010 and eight Division II titles.
Others hailed from the likes of Alabama A&M, Central Arkansas and Western Kentucky.
The NCAA’s policy on name, image and likeness allowing student-athletes to profit from their personal brand was implemented in the summer of 2021. Shortly thereafter, the NCAA approved changes that allowed athletes to transfer multiple times and still be immediately eligible, providing they met certain criteria.
Players like Jeanty and Zabel are still getting drafted — it's just that they're coming from traditional football factories now.
There could be a bigger dearth of small-school names called in this year's draft on April 23-25 in Pittsburgh because of the 319 prospects invited to the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis, only 17 were from nonpower conference schools.
That includes safety Emmanuel McNeil-Warren of Toledo, whom NFL draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah rates as the 16th-best prospect in the draft, and San Diego State defensive back Chris Johnson, whom Jeremiah ranks 40th.
This phenomenon has changed the way some NFL teams scout college prospects, cutting down on their trips to check out players on small campuses.
“I think as you set your schedule for where you want your scouts to spend their most time, I think even in the last couple of years, you want them more in those places, concentrated areas like we talked about,” Broncos general manager George Paton said. “Not that there’s not going to be good players in some of these other smaller schools.”
It’s just that plenty of them have transferred to the power conferences where, besides more money, they get more exposure and build their personal brand.
Paton drafted one of the best small college finds this decade when he picked guard Quinn Meinerz of Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater in the third round of the 2021 NFL draft.
One of 37 smaller school draftees that year, Meinerz quickly established himself as one of the league's top guards and in 2024 he showed up in a gold paisley suit to sign his new $80 million contract. Since then, he's earned back-to-back first-team All-Pro honors.
Playing “for the love of the game” at the Division III level, Meinerz found himself on NFL radars despite playing in the obscure Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
“There's a pretty good scouting department across the entire NFL,” Meinerz said, “and they'll come find you.”
That they will, but more and more scouts don't have to bother straying too far from the campuses of the Power Four.
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AP Sports Writer Pat Graham contributed.
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