Folks try not to get too political here but I think at the heart of it, most of college football’s problems stem from the very best of the best feeling like they are being taken advantage of.

This isn’t the fault of the universities. It’s the NFL that won’t sign multimillion dollar contracts with athletes until they’ve seen 3 years of collegiate play.

I think most of the problems would be solved if the NFL ran its own paid developmental league. It would be by invitation only—players of course would be free to turn down that offer and play collegiately. I think it’d be simpler if their contracts were with the league itself rather than 1 of the 32 NFL franchises. Only players ages 18-24 would be eligible.

For the NFL draft, players from the developmental league would be draft eligible alongside collegiate players who declare. Heck, maybe you could even allow young players stay another season or two in the developmental league after being drafted if the NFL team liked the guy but didn’t think he was quite ready.

I think it would be best to centrally locate practice and training facilities but barnstorm for the actual games and compose the teams based on where they were recruited from so say the “Ohio” team might play its home games in various places around the state.

Play in Spring/Summer so they aren’t in conflict with college games or the NFL schedule.
I think the NFL needs to accept the fact that they are part of the problem and pay to fix it.

I’m going back on my OP. I’m calling this proposal the NextFL. Give each NFL team right of first refusal on any kid attending high school within a 100 mi radius of the franchise’s stadium. (i.e. if you want to recruit a Pittsburgh kid the Steelers have to waive their territorial rights to the kid).

Spring schedule playing out of the NFL stadium. Pricing catered towards families.

Why should the NFL do this? Is what they have now not working for them?

They will probably want to if there is a wide scale separation / downgrade between the P5 and the rest. Not all the best players get recruited by the P5's and the NFL would stand to lose some quality of their product if they don't get more involved in player support and development.

There is this currently:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spring...talent.%22