NFL draft: Cam Ward goes No. 1 overall and Shedeur Sanders slides out of the first round

The NFL draft is broadcast stay on tv yearly as thousands and thousands tune in and lots of of hundreds extra attend in particular person to revel within the hoopla of all of it.

It’s a far cry from the occasion’s humble beginnings, when the participant picked first didn’t even realize it was occurring and shortly walked away from the sport with out ever incomes a cent.

Two-hundred-fifty-seven gamers can be drafted this week in Inexperienced Bay, Wisconsin, and anybody chosen within the first spherical – which begins at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday – can be set for all times with assured multi-million-dollar contracts. It was all very totally different within the first yr of the draft again in 1936 when simply 81 gamers had been chosen by means of 9 rounds within the inaugural draft.

There was little doubt that University of Chicago halfback Jay Berwanger would go first that yr. At 6-foot tall and 195 kilos, the standout participant of his class had simply acquired the primary ever Heisman Trophy and been named because the Chicago Tribune’s Huge 10 participant of the yr.

The Hartford Courant described the primary draft as “no gala, more like a penny-ante poker game. Nine cigar-puffing, mogul wannabees, some of whom were paying their players with IOUs, stubbornly trying to salvage their dream of professional football.”

Berwanger informed the Courant in 1994 that he was oblivious to the draft on the Ritz-Carlton Resort in Philadelphia.

“I found out I was drafted by reading it in the newspaper,” he stated, “I didn’t even know the draft was going on.”

Philadelphia Eagles proprietor Bert Bell had persuaded his friends to formalize a draft so as to stop the costly and “self-defeating” bidding wars for faculty gamers and he’d proposed that groups ought to select gamers in reverse order from the earlier season’s standings. That meant the worst group, Bell’s personal 2-9 Eagles, went first and selected Berwanger, rapidly dealing his rights to the Chicago Bears. The Eagles didn’t suppose they’d be capable of afford Berwanger’s wage calls for, and the Bears proprietor and coach George Halas quickly realized he didn’t manage to pay for, both.

In response to the Courant, the 2 met within the foyer of a downtown lodge in Chicago.

“He asked what I wanted,” Berwanger recalled, “and I had my tongue in my cheek. I told him, $25,000 for two years. He looked at my date and said, `Nice to have met you; have a nice time tonight.’ And that was the end of it.”

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