Window for underclassmen to withdraw from draft closes; no one leaves! … The 72-hour window for underclassmen who applied to the NFL for early admission to the 2024 draft to withdraw their names closed yesterday afternoon without anyone reportedly doing so. Sometime in the next day or so the league will announce the full list of underclassmen eligible for the upcoming draft and at that time we’ll get an official count on the number of redshirt sophomores and juniors in this year’s draft. The early sense is that the number in fact will be lower than in recent years as players appear to be taking advantage of the new NIL rules in college football which allow them make money off their names, in some cases as much as they’d make as NFL rookies. The one thing we can say is that as far as we can tell an inordinate numbers of players, be they underclassmen or seniors, appear to have opted to return to college, either their original school or thru the transfer portal. This year, for example, we had over 200 players on our post-season Big Board. As of today, there are less than 175 remaining. In the past, there were always a few players who dropped off the list, but never anything like that. For the record, we have completed a major re-ranking of each positional grouping and hope to have an updated Big Board (hopefully back up to 200+) by the end of the weekend.
