CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — American college football on Tuesday officially ended its most beloved new sport, the retrograde draft, in which players go to the pros, discover the pros are a job, and return to the pros’ old job with a fifth year of eligibility attached. The Big Ten Conference, per ESPN’s sources, approved a rule that makes permanently ineligible any player who signed a professional contract, was on a professional roster at any point, or declared for the NFL Draft as an underclassman without withdrawing.
The rule is, in the language of the conference, about “maintaining eligibility standards,” which is the way the conference describes the moment it has decided that the loop is closed. The loop, for those who have been watching, is the one that has produced, over the last few years, a rotating door between NFL training camp and a Big Ten weight room, with the door’s hinges held together by a Louisiana judge’s temporary restraining order and a head coach who has described the arrangement, when asked, as “not mine.”
The SEC, which had already taken a position on the matter, has now joined in, and the combined posture of the two power conferences is that a player who has been a professional is, going forward, a professional, full stop. The rule’s coverage is worth reading once, because it is broader than the headline suggests: it is not only football that is in play. A player who signs a contract with “any pro league” is out, which is to say the conference has, in a single provision, decided that the NBA, the WNBA, and the MLS are also, in some sense, professional, a fact that was in dispute in this building until Tuesday.
The practical effect is a one-way door that is, on paper, two-way but, in practice, one-way, and the difference between the two is the entire story. A player who declares and withdraws is still a player. A player who signs and is released before the season is, on the rule’s language, already gone, which means the door the conference has closed is the one that was open for the released, the undrafted, the practice-squad, and the player who was on the roster for a day and is now, permanently, on the roster for a day. The eligibility office, per a source familiar with the rule’s drafting, is “working through the edge cases,” and the edge cases are, by the count, the entire roster.
THE RETROGRADE DRAFT: FINAL SCORE
- Declared and withdrew: Still eligible. The door opens and closes and the player is in the building.
- Declared and did not withdraw: Permanently ineligible. The door, as the rule reads, has been a wall since the second of the first period.
- Signed a pro contract, any league: Permanently ineligible. The NBA, per the Big Ten, is a professional league, a fact that was in dispute until Tuesday.
- On a pro roster for any length of time: Permanently ineligible. A day is a roster. A week is a roster. The practice squad, per the rule, was always the roster.
What the rule does not settle is the part everyone actually wanted to know, which is what happens to the players already on the other side of the door. The rule is forward-looking, which is the way all the best rules are forward-looking, and the players who are currently in the loop are, per a conference official, “subject to the existing framework,” which is a phrase that has, in the history of the sport, meant everything and nothing and, in this case, probably nothing.
At press time, the first player to be named on a Big Ten roster under the new rule had not yet been named, and the first player to be denied one had not yet been denied one, and the eligibility office, per the source, is “still reading the document,” which is, by the count, the third time the office has read the document, and the document, per the office, “is what it is.”