With rare exceptions, the only way to enter the NFL is by playing college football. About 230 different colleges had players drafted during the study period. As will be shown below, most draftees come from one of the 65 Power 5 colleges. And within the Power 5 colleges, 20 colleges account for the highest number of those draftees. Here are the 20 colleges and the number of draft selections from 2012-2019. There are no surprises in this list.
Power 5 Schools Versus the Rest
The goal of the analysis in this section is to determine whether there is an advantage to drafting Power 5 or if those players are over-drafted. The following table shows the percentage of draftees in each segment of the draft with the college groupings abbreviated as follows:
• T20 dominates the first round and even into the top of the second round
• P5 dominate throughout but particularly in the earlier rounds
• NP5 had stronger representation in the later rounds
• Six NP5 players were selected in the top five picks (Ziggy Ansah, Blake Bortles, Corey Davis, Eric Fisher, Kahlil Mack, Carson Wentz)
Next, we reviewed the percentage of draft choices by playing position for tendencies.
• Other than FBs, which we ignore in this analysis due to their small numbers, there are no large variances in the breakdown among the schools
• NP5 schools have their highest representation in the draft selections of defensive backs, defensive linemen, and running backs
• T20 schools are dominant among RBs, TEs, DL and LB
• OPS have the highest representation in QBs, WR, DB and OL
Now that the stage is set, let’s look at the performance for each group. The following table shows the percentage of Significant Contributors by playing position.
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