Being Drafted

ASIDE FROM MY complete lack of interest i football in April, and the apparent fact that my Chicago Bears are never allowed to draft anybody, the NFL draft strikes me as a most peculiar institution, although the reason for its existence is obvious; competitive balance, equality, a good product on the field.Most peculiar of all is that in teh land of free enterprise and freedom, adults can only gain employment in professional football by being selected by their employer, with no opportunity to determine their employer, no opportunity to even apply for employment in more than one place, unless the opportunity arises by being dismissed by the team which selects them. If you're a professional quality football player, leaving college, and you passionately want to play for, say, the packers, and you are drafted by the Bears, you're feces out of luck, so to speak, you're going to be a Bear, not a packer, and what you want matters not. This seems somehow strangely un-american, inimical to our sacred value of individual freedom and opportunity, it seems downright socialistic, even though its a good system with good reasoning behind it, and it works well. One alternative might be to permit all players, any player to be drafted by more than one team, by a certain limited number of teams, to give him some choice in the matter, and to install a system whereby all players submit a list of the teams for which they would be willing to play, for which they would like to play. This would give the young, powerless, but adult citizen football player at least some measure of individual freedom and power to influence and control his own fate. Presumably, such options have been discussed, and presumably, they have been dismissed. However, in an ear in which we are on the verge of paying college football players, thus freeing them from their traditional status as chattel property, well, anything is possible.