Who produces probably the most NFL Draft picks? We charted each school producing professionals within the trendy period

It’s draft week. Should you’re a power fan, you’ve most likely visited the well-known “Jimmy Johnson draft-pick value chart” sooner or later this week to see what it could value in your NFL crew to commerce up in your favourite prospect or see how a lot your crew may usher in with a commerce again within the draft. The tactic to create that Johnson Chart, although, was market-based, not results-based. As The Washington Post recently put it, Mike McCoy “plotted on logarithmic paper each commerce involving a draft choose over the earlier 4 years” to search out the worth of a draft choose.

Thirty years have handed since that day and we now have higher instruments to research the draft from a results-based standpoint. For instance, the Fitzgerald-Spielberger NFL draft trade value chart frames draft slots primarily based on what the gamers picked in these slots are paid after their rookie contracts as a substitute of how a lot groups are keen to surrender on draft day. That’s a results-based chart, not the market-based chart that McCoy constructed.

Utilizing the Fitzgerald-Spielberger chart, I assumed it could be fascinating to take a look at the place NFL prospects are coming from, utilizing a contemporary perspective, in recent times. So I hooked up the Fitzgerald-Spielberger worth to each draft choose since 2011, the primary 12 months during which rookie contracts primarily had slated salaries with the signing of the collective bargaining settlement signed that offseason, and cleaned the info in order that UCF and Central Florida or NIU and Northern Illinois weren’t listed as totally different colleges. Thanks, Wikipedia!

The desk beneath is what 2,803 NFL draft picks appear to be, by college, from the attitude of the Fitzgerald-Spielberger chart. In whole, 237 school applications (and two draft picks who by no means performed school soccer) mixed for 1,938,664 “draft worth factors” in simply over a decade. That is the place NFL draft picks come from.

Let’s digest a few of these numbers:

Prime Colleges

1. Alabama: 102,415 draft worth factors
2. Ohio State: 72,765
3. LSU: 68,356
4. Clemson: 54,324
5. Florida: 51,758
6. Georgia: 48,315
7. Florida State: 45,351
8. Notre Dame: 43,723
9. Oklahoma: 41,648
10. USC: 40,730

Should you’re any kind of school soccer fan, the listing of prime groups placing out NFL expertise shouldn’t come as something near stunning. Of the school soccer playoff’s 24 wins, 23 of them are represented within the top-10 talent-producing applications. To place it merely: The nice groups in school soccer have the higher gamers, a minimum of within the eyes of NFL evaluators.

In whole, roughly half of the draft capital since 2011 has been spent on gamers from the top-23 school soccer applications. Over 1 / 4 of the draft capital is spent on gamers from the highest eight colleges on this listing.

The highest canine is Alabama, a program solely 4 others can declare they’ve produced half of the draft worth of over the past 11 lessons. After the 2022 draft, Georgia may very well be the fifth crew added to the listing, if Florida can sustain.

Prime Group of 5 Colleges

1. Boise State: 18,349 draft worth factors
2. UCF: 15,475
3. Temple: 12,732
4. San Diego State: 11,413
5. Houston: 11,191
6. BYU: 10,390
7. UConn: 10,165
8. Memphis: 9,202
9. Cincinnati: 8,922
10. Louisiana Tech: 8,345

If you break up out the highest Group of 5 applications in expertise manufacturing, there are loads of acquainted faces, too. The highest-10 is made up of groups who’re talked about as darkish horses to make New Yr’s Six bowl video games or are incessantly talked about in convention realignment. For reference, 4 of the groups above will probably be making the soar to the Huge 12, a Energy 5 convention, within the close to future.

Boise State, the highest Group of 5 program by way of pushing expertise into the NFL, really ranks greater on this listing than some Southeastern Convention applications like Ole Miss or Tennessee. Loads of these G5 groups produce extra expertise than the low finish of the Energy 5, too. For instance, 38 G5 applications rank greater than the Huge 12’s Kansas, 26 rank greater than the Huge 12’s Iowa State and 15 rank greater than the Pac 12’s Arizona.

UConn is the one crew that stands out like a sore thumb. The Huskies have solely received greater than three video games in a single season as soon as since 2012 however do a fairly good job of getting defensive gamers within the NFL. For no matter cause, although, it hasn’t translated to wins for this system.

Whereas the highest finish of the G5 competes nicely with the low finish of the P5, all G5 groups aren’t equal. For instance, UNLV and Military are the one two FBS applications since 2011 that haven’t produced a single draft choose within the NFL.

Prime “Small Colleges”

1. North Dakota State: 8,447 draft worth factors
2. South Carolina State: 3,112
3. Northern Iowa: 3,013
4. Jap Washington: 2,729
5. Samford: 2,651
6. Delaware: 2,473
7. Villanova: 2,193
8. Montana: 2,140
9. Idaho: 1,797
10. North Carolina A&T: 1,718

Outdoors of the FBS, there may be loads of NFL expertise to be discovered. Gamers like Darius Leonard, Cooper Kupp and David Johnson have all come from the FCS ranks, which is led, by far, by the North Dakota State Bison. In truth, North Dakota State would rank tenth amongst all applications exterior of the Energy 5, placing them on par with a few of the prime Group of 5 applications by way of producing NFL expertise.

Among the many top-35 small college applications, which incorporates the FCS, Division II and Division III, 32 of these groups are FCS applications, the decrease classification of Division I soccer.

Divisional Breakdown

• Division I (FBS & FCS): 98.68%
• FBS (Energy 5 & Group of 5): 94.46%
• Energy 5: 79.93%
• Group of 5: 14.53%
• FCS: 4.22%
• Division II: 1.03%
• Division III: 0.17%
• U Sports activities (Canada): 0.08%
• No School: 0.03%
• NAIA: 0.01%

Almost 97 p.c of the draft capital since 2011 has been spent on Division I soccer gamers with 94 p.c going towards FBS alternatives. Decrease divisions are represented, although, with non-NCAA organizations like U Sports activities, Canada’s school soccer governing physique, and the NAIA, an American NCAA different, producing draft picks. Two draft picks, Moritz Böhringer of Germany and Jordan Mailata of Australia, by no means performed school soccer earlier than being chosen late within the NFL draft.

FBS Convention Breakdown

• SEC: 25.22%
• Huge 10: 15.42%
• ACC: 15.29%
• Pac 12: 13.36%
• Huge 12: 8.29%
• AAC: 4.17%
• Mountain West: 3.65%
• Impartial: 3.60%
• Convention USA: 2.39%
• MAC: 1.75%
• Solar Belt: 1.22%

When the info is damaged down by convention, it’s simple to see why most rational school soccer followers contemplate the SEC to be the highest convention in school soccer. On draft day, they produce roughly two-thirds extra expertise than the subsequent tier of faculties, made up of the Huge 10, ACC and Pac 12 conferences. It’s additionally simple to see that the Huge 12 has lagged behind the opposite Energy 5 conferences, as they’re break up pretty evenly between these applications and the highest Group of 5 convention, the AAC.

Convention Realignment?

All of those numbers had been calculated by indexing groups into the conferences that they performed in for the 2021 school soccer season. With the entire modifications in realignment, particularly within the Huge 12, SEC, AAC, Solar Belt and Convention USA, although, it’s value looking at how the motion may impression prospect manufacturing for particular person conferences as soon as the mud is settled.

The large winners from this wave of realignment, unsurprisingly, are the SEC, which is including Oklahoma and Texas, and the Solar Belt, which poached the highest finish of Convention USA. What’s fascinating, although, is that the Huge 12, after including Cincinnati, BYU, Houston and UCF, will really lose much less in realignment, from an NFL expertise perspective, than the AAC and Convention USA, who’re the massive losers within the shifting school soccer panorama.