Hi! Draft anon here! I would love to better understand how the draft works, and also what the new draft rule is where you don’t have to declare? I really just want to know everything!
Anon? You're my new best friend, these are the BEST words to read.
OKAY I'm going to assume a base level knowledge about the draft, aka it's teams picking people, and work from there. BUCKLE UP BRO, IT'LL BE A RIDE. I'm gonna hide this under a break too because it's a long one and it includes a moment where I raged against the league. Have fun!
Okay so, let's do the basics. College athletes, for the most part, are under the NCAA umbrella, which gives athletes opportunities for scholarships, aid and support and sets up championships between schools. Colleges are divided in 3 divisions (conveniently named the D1, D2 and D3), with the first division being the top schools in their sports, players in those teams are the ones that usually turn professional in their sport just because their schools have more money and therefore better resources for their athletes.
Every athlete in a D1 school has 5 years to play 4 seasons of their sport, and most of them are expected to run their eligibility by the time they graduate (the eligibility rules are a little different for D2 and D3 schools but more or less aims for the same thing) SOME of those players forfeit their remaining eligibility before graduation to turn "pro", and enter their sport's draft, although it's not necessary and players who've run their eligibility usually enter the draft before they graduate so they can start playing for their team right after college. The draft is when whatever national league they expect to play for (the MLB, NHL, NFL, NWSL, etc) pick from a pool of players leaving their college teams to play professionally, these are "prospects".
For the NWSL, the teams are assigned a pick number. The worst team in the league picks first, and so on until the top team selects their pick and that signals the end of the round, for expansion years the expansion team picks first, then the worst team in the league, and so on. The league creates a pool of 40 players that can sign up to be drafted, and the draftees are set up in 4 rounds of 10 players each.
The players aren't put in any particular order in the draft pool of picks but they are "prospected" to be picked by a certain numbered team based on their skill and acollades. For this upcoming draft pool, Catarina Macario is expected to be the first pick of the first round. It's not a great vibe to go to the worst team of a league but draft picks are the future of a team, and coaches that pick first are, usually, desperate and will begin to build their team formations around their draftee.
In other leagues draft pick trading is, I think, way funnier. Because the team that originally had the picks, let's say for example Sky Blue trades up for the 4th pick in the first round from Washington. If it were another league, let's say the NHL, Washington gets a little note from Sky Blue saying "we want Jane Doe for the 4th pick", Washington would have to pick her with all the fanfare that goes with it, and then watch her go to sky blue because they traded the pick away. In the NWSL the team that gets a pick in a trade does the picking themselves. Which is less "lol" and more "business as usual".
NOW THE NEW RULE: the NWSL obtained a waiver from the NCAA to draft D1 players who, in any other year might not have an option between entering the draft and forfeiting their last college season, which would suck for people who've put their hearts and souls into their teams, or skipping the draft for one more year and have to be out of the game for nearly a year once their season is over. Which, like, is awesome on the NCAA's part! These players get a last chance at college sports and can report to the teams that drafted them once the season is over.
The part where the NWSL went and took a wonderful thing and fucked it all up is with the rule that anyone who has exhausted their 3yr eligibility is draft eligible, REGARDLESS of them signing up for the draft. The logic is that it will expand the talent pool and give teams more talent to work with.
Let me tell you what this does in NOT PG13 words—children cover your eyes. This just about fuuuucks player rights up their hindquarters with no warning and no lube.
Players that are eligible, even if they don't enter the draft (read as: don't want to be drafted yet or maybe ever) can be picked by teams and their rights will be held until the 2022 season. It means that drafted players can have their rights traded away and, if they ever expect to enter the league, will be sent to whatever fucking team their rights were drafted by or traded to without their input. ESPECIALLY BECAUSE, AND HERE'S THE CATCH 22, THE NCAA WAIVER MEANS PLAYERS CANT SIGN AGENTS TO QUALIFY FOR IT.
What does that mean for my point, you may ask? It means that, let's say:
Jane Doe is a player in a D1 school. She doesn't want to be drafted to the league so she doesn't sign up. However, she is a college senior with 3 years of NCAA eligibility behind her, and is therefore draft eligible. She doesn't want her rights to be held by whomever the hell to do with as they please before she's ready so she thinks about hiring an agent. However, if she hires an agent she, as far as I know, would have to forfeit her remaining college eligibility and "go pro". If she does, she won't be eligible for the draft according to these rules, but she also can't play for her college team, AND she won't have a team once the college season is over because she wasn't picked up in the draft. So now, she's out of game shape, she has to find a team to sign her and maybe her best odd was going to be being drafted in the 3rd or 4th round of the nwsl draft, now she has to look for a team to sign her. Or have to not play professionally. But she will want to play professionally. So, her only option is to be picked up by some team in this draft, even though let's say she expected to have better odds for a higher pick in the next draft, and have her rights done away with for a whole season and have to report to a random team after maybe having had her rights used as a bargaining chip for trades.
Now, obviously, this is hella fatalistic. And looking at it in the worst possible light. But we know that the NWSL is not a stranger to doing all kinds of willy nilly shit with players who are not federation allocated, and this is just one more open door into fucking with players rights, this time with prospects.
It was such a good idea to begin with, to take up this Waiver and give their prospects one more year of college soccer where they can push for their last championship, before coming in fired up to the league, knowing for an entire year what team they would play for, probably having off season training with their new teammates. This was, in no uncertain words, a good thing. But then the league had to stomp on it.
It's trial and error and the NWSL is a newish league, and hopefully no one will get their playing rights messed with. But in case they do, I'm gonna hate to have to say I told you so.
I hope that answers your questions?
I WELCOME ANY OPINIONS ON MY VIEW OF THIS. I'M VERY FATALISTIC ABOUT IT BUT I KNOW SOME OF Y'ALL HAVE BETTER VIBES!
