The Early Entry Question

LSU running back Leonard Fournette is the latest college football player to bring cries from the media for even earlier entry into the NFL. Currently players are not draft eligible until they are three years removed from their high school graduation. No matter how skilled the player might be. Fournette may play like a back that's ready for the NFL but he's only a sophomore. As it stands now, he's eligible for the 2017 NFL Draft. Not one draft before.

Whenever one of these supremely talented college football players bursts onto the scene the media gets all self-righteous. They take on the cause of the oppressed college football player that's not allowed to an NFL wage because of the year that he was born. That cry was once for Adrian Petrson and Jadeveon Clowney. Now it's for Leonard Fourentte. The media attacks the NFL and the rules on draft eligibility that benefit only their "farm system" otherwise known as the NCAA. It's funny that it's the media that screams the loudest over this oppression. Perhaps the one group that knows the least about football. They just want to stir up a controversy. Social media has only made it worse. These loud mouths conveniently forget, or don't even know, that for every Leonard Fournette that might be ready for the NFL there are about a 100 that aren't but think that they are. Each year as many as 100 football players leave college a single year early. Several go undrafted. Many don't make it out of an NFL training camp. So many fail to have anything close to a professional football career that warrants ending their college days and perhaps giving up on a chance at a college degree. USC receiver Mike Williams and Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett challenged these rules several years ago and their NFL careers amounted to nearly nothing. Whenever a football player like Leonard Fournette comes around those that know little to nothing about the demands of the sport say that waiting three years is unfair. They also forget that the current eligibility rules aren't for Leonard Fournette. They are for the players that aren't Leonard Fournette but think that they are.

Not only are many in the media challenging the NFL's eligibility rules they are calling for Leonard Fournette, and those like him, to sit out their junior/third year to escape the risk of injury before their shot at that NFL money. I guess that they are screaming this as a "that'll show those big, bad NFL and NCAA bastards" sort of statement. Who knows what triggers these clowns? Fournette has already said that he isn't even considering sitting out next season. That alone should close the book on this nonsense. After all, this is entirely his decision. The media doesn't care about that. They just want to bitch about the NFL. So I can bitch about the media.