1. Odds of high school players going pro

 

Surely a lot of people dream of becoming a sports star. Since football is the most popular sport in the United States, a great many students devote themselves very early in high

school. When asked about their expectations, most student-athletes are surprisingly very confident about the possibility of becoming a professional football player, according to the survey conducted by NCAA in 2016. However, reality seems crueler than what they expected.

So how many chances on earth for high school athletes going pro?

According to the data released by NCAA, there were 1,083,308 high school participants in 2016, and 73,660 or nearly 6.8% of them got the chance to compete in NCAA. In addition, only 2.6% of high school players are eligible to the Division I—NACC catually has three divisions, and Division I is the highest one, which stores most resources and opportunities. Furthermore, among those 73,660 NCAA participants, only 16,369 or 22% of them are Draft Eligible. Nonetheless, only 253 slots were provided, a very small number compared to the total. In the end, 251 NCAA participants were drafted to NFL—that is 1.5% of those 16,369 Draft Eligible players.

Roughly speaking, there were 1,083,308 high school football players competing, and eventually 251 made it to pro. After simple calculation, we can get that the percentage of student-athletes going pro is approximately 0.023%. In truth, this number is not encouraging for anyone eager for a professional career.

 

References:

The Rules of the Draft. (n.d.). Retrieved December 05, 2017, from https://operations.nfl.com/the-players/the-nfl-draft/the-rules-of-the-draft/

R. (2017, March 13). Football. Retrieved December 05, 2017, from http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/football

R. (2017, March 13). Estimated probability of competing in professional athletics. Retrieved December 05, 2017, from http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/estimated-probability-competing-professional-athletics