What began as a quiet organizational exercise in a Philadelphia hotel room in 1936 has become the second-biggest event in American sports television. Here's the full story.
In the early NFL, teams competed openly for college talent — signing players before their eligibility ended, bidding wars driving up salaries, and stronger franchises locking up the best players year after year. The competitive imbalance was threatening the league's viability.
Commissioner Joe Carr had already made strides in organizing the league, but it was his successor Bert Bell who came up with the solution. Bell proposed a selection system in which teams would pick players in the reverse order of their prior season's finish — the worst team first, the champion last. The concept was radical: deliberately giving the worst teams the best players. The owners agreed, and on February 8, 1936, the first NFL Draft was held at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia.
The first pick in NFL Draft history was Jay Berwanger, a halfback from the University of Chicago who had just won the first Heisman Trophy. The Philadelphia Eagles selected him first overall. Berwanger never played a single NFL game — he couldn't agree on salary terms and went into business instead. The first ever pick in the most important talent selection process in American sports simply declined to play.
Early drafts bore little resemblance to today's event. They were held in hotel rooms, team representatives often didn't attend, and the rounds were numerous — the 1936 draft had nine rounds, but many teams in subsequent years drafted 20, 25, even 30 players. Most of these late picks would never play professionally.
Teams frequently drafted players without knowing if they were still in college, had already graduated, or had any interest in professional football. Players drafted in later rounds were little more than names on a list — useful only if they showed up to camp. The draft was a talent filing system, not yet a scouting showcase.
The real value was in the first few rounds, where franchises began to understand they could identify talent through film and scouting reports. The Cleveland Browns' Paul Brown pioneered systematic film study and built what we now recognize as the modern NFL scouting department.
The formation of the AFL in 1960 created a competing talent market. Both leagues held their own drafts and bid against each other for the same college players. The resulting salary inflation accelerated the AFL-NFL merger negotiations. One of the unifying elements was a joint draft, which began in 1967 — eliminating the bidding wars and creating a single, orderly selection process for all of professional football.
Television coverage began in the early 1980s, but the draft was still held in hotel ballrooms and convention halls, with the commissioner announcing picks from a podium as teams called in their selections. There was little of the spectacle we recognize today.
Key picks from the early era that shaped franchise histories: Joe Namath (1st, 1965, Jets AFL), O.J. Simpson (1st, 1969, Bills), Terry Bradshaw (1st, 1970, Steelers), John Elway (1st, 1983, traded from Colts to Broncos), Dan Marino (27th overall, 1983, Dolphins — the most famous fall in draft history).
No draft class has been more discussed in NFL history than 1983. Six quarterbacks were taken in the first round: John Elway (1st), Todd Blackledge (7th), Jim Kelly (14th), Tony Eason (15th), Ken O'Brien (24th), and Dan Marino (27th). Elway, Kelly, and Marino all reached the Hall of Fame. Six first-round picks at one position in one year has never been matched.
Dan Marino's fall to 27th overall is the reference point for every "how did they miss that?" draft debate. Marino's completion percentage, touchdown numbers, and release speed were off the charts — teams passed on him citing reported marijuana use and concerns about his college team's late-season decline. He went on to set passing records that stood for decades. The 26 teams that passed on him are the cautionary tale for every team that overthinks draft evaluation.
The NFL moved the draft to New York City's Madison Square Garden in the mid-1970s, then to Radio City Music Hall in 1985, where it stayed for nearly three decades. Radio City transformed the draft into a theater production. Commissioner Pete Rozelle — and later Paul Tagliabue and Roger Goodell — walked to the podium and announced each pick to an auditorium of fans who cheered (and booed) the selections.
The Radio City crowd became infamous for their reactions to first-round picks. Commissioner Roger Goodell absorbed ritual booing as he walked to the microphone. Quarterbacks taken high were greeted with skepticism; beloved local players generated ovations. The booing became a tradition in itself — fans treating the draft commissioner as a pantomime villain while acknowledging the gravity of the event.
ESPN began broadcasting the draft in 1980, with Mel Kiper Jr. becoming the first prominent draft analyst. Kiper's encyclopedic knowledge of college players — and his willingness to criticize picks in real time on national television — was revolutionary. Teams were accustomed to making picks in relative secrecy; suddenly their decisions were analyzed, graded, and debated nationally within minutes.
The "draft grade" — a letter grade assigned to each team's class immediately after the draft — is now a staple of sports media, despite the well-documented fact that nobody really knows which picks will pan out for 3–5 years. Teams with heavy, immediate needs get "A" grades for addressing them; patient, system-specific teams get "C's" that age well. Mel Kiper and Mike Mayock (who later became a GM himself) made draft analysis a legitimate career path in sports media.
The NFL made a decisive move in 2015: relocating the draft from New York to a different NFL city each year, turning it into a three-day outdoor festival that draws hundreds of thousands of fans. Chicago (2015) drew 200,000 fans in Grant Park. Philadelphia (2017) drew 250,000 to the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Nashville (2019) drew 600,000+ across three days, making it the most-attended draft in history at that point. Las Vegas, Detroit, and Kansas City have since hosted, each setting attendance records.
The draft now includes a red carpet, players invited as "draft prospects" who attend in person to hear their names called (or not), and a television production that rivals prime-time entertainment. Day 1 (Round 1) averages 10–12 million viewers; Day 2 (Rounds 2–3) draws 5–7 million; Day 3 (Rounds 4–7) brings 3–4 million. For a pure talent evaluation exercise, the numbers are staggering.
The 2026 NFL Draft takes place April 23–25 at Lambeau Field and the surrounding grounds in Green Bay, Wisconsin — the smallest market in professional sports hosting one of the league's biggest events. It is a full-circle moment: the Green Bay Packers, the community-owned franchise founded in 1919, hosting the event that more than any other determines which franchises will compete with them over the next decade.
Now that you know the history, learn the mechanics of the draft — pick order, trading, compensatory picks, and everything else that happens from April 23–25 in Green Bay.