Draft ( sports ) A draft is a process used to allocate certain players to sport s teams . In a draft , teams take turns selecting from a pool of eligible players . When a team selects a player , the team receives exclusive rights to sign that player to a contract , and no other team in the league may sign the player . The best - known type of draft is the entry draft , which is used to allocate players who have recently become eligible to play in a league . Depending on the sport , the players may come from college , high school or junior teams or teams in other countries . An entry draft prevents expensive bidding wars for young talent and ensures that no one team can sign contracts with all of the best young players and make the league uncompetitive . To encourage parity , teams that do poorly in the previous season usually get to choose first in the postseason draft . Other types of drafts include the expansion draft , in which a new team selects players from other teams in the league ; and the dispersal draft , in which a league ' s surviving teams select players from the roster of a newly defunct franchise . Drafts are usually permitted under anti - trust or restraint of trade laws because they are included in collective bargaining agreement s between leagues and labor union s representing players . These agreements generally stipulate that after a certain number of seasons , a player whose contract has expired becomes a free agent and can sign with any team . They also require minimum and sometimes maximum salaries for newly drafted players . National Football League President Joseph Carr instituted a draft in 1935 as a way to restrain teams ' payrolls and reduce the dominance of the league ' s perennial contenders . It was adopted by the precursor of the National Basketball Association in 1947 ; by the National Hockey League in 1963 ; and by Major League Baseball in 1965 , although draft systems had been used in baseball since the 19th century . Drafts are uncommon in association football , specially in Major League Soccer , where most professional clubs obtain young players through transfers from smaller clubs or by developing youth players through their own academies . The youth system is operated directly by the teams themselves , who develop their players from childhood . North America . NFL Draft . Draft order in the NFL is determined in a reverse - record order ( the previous season ' s worst team picking first , the Super Bowl winner picking last ) . There are 7 rounds of the draft , so each team can have 7 selections , plus whatever compensatory selections a team receives as a result of free agency ( up to 32 compensatory selections are given each year ) . Teams are allowed to trade draft picks ( but not compensatory selections ) among each other in exchange for other draft picks or in exchange for players . Because the NFL requires that players be three years removed from high school , players are chosen almost exclusively from National Collegiate Athletic Association college football programs . The NFL Draft has become one of the key events on the American football calendar . It is held in April at New York ' s Radio City Music Hall and aired live on television . CFL Draft . The Canadian Football League holds its annual player draft before the start of the season , either in the last days of April or the start of May . It was formerly held as part of the annual league meetings in Hamilton , but is now typically held by conference call . Since 1997 , the draft has consisted of six rounds , with teams drafting in inverse order of their records in the previous season . As with the NFL Draft , trading of picks is very common , meaning that a team will not necessarily have six picks in a given draft . The draft is restricted to " non - imports " — essentially , players who were raised in Canada ( see the relevant section of the main CFL article ) . Eligible players can be drafted both from CIS football programs in Canada and U . S . college football programs ( with the latter category containing one Canadian school , Simon Fraser ) . Disaster draft . Major professional sports leagues ( including the KHL , MLB , NBA , NFL , and NHL ) have special contingency plans for rebuilding a team should an accident or other disaster kill or disable many players . Other terminology . A draft bust occurs when a highly touted or highly selected draftee does not meet expectations . This can be for a variety of reasons , but the most often noted are injury or inability to perform at a professional level . A player is also regarded as a larger bust if more successful players are drafted after him or her . An example of a draft bust occurred with the San Diego Chargers in the 1998 NFL Draft . The Chargers selected promising quarterback Ryan Leaf with the second pick . However , Leaf only managed to play two years with the Chargers and started only 18 games ( and winning only 4 games ) for them before being released . Another example is LaRue Martin , drafted 1st overall in the 1972 NBA Draft ahead of Bob McAdoo and Julius Erving . McAdoo & Erving went on to be elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and are both usually mentioned as all - time greats , whereas Martin only played 4 NBA seasons for a career average of just over 5 points per game before retiring as arguably the biggest NBA draft bust ever . Other NBA draft busts are Kwame Brown ( 2001 ) , Darko Miličić ( 2003 ) . Conversely , a lowly - drafted player going on to have a stellar career is a draft steal . Joe Montana , listed by Sports Illustrated as the third - best player in history was drafted 82nd overall in 1979 , the fourth quarterback to be chosen . Mike Piazza , drafted " dead last " ( and only as a favor from Tommy Lasorda ) and became one of the best catchers of the 1990s and is a probable future Hall of Famer . Tom Brady , who has won three Super Bowls and appeared in two others , was selected in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL Draft , behind six quarterbacks , none of whom matched Brady ' s success ( this is the subject of a 2011 ESPN documentary , " The Brady 6 " ) . In the NBA , Manu Ginóbili , a key contributor to three San Antonio Spurs championships in the 2000s and centerpiece of Argentina ' s Olympic gold medal team in 2004 , was the next - to - last pick in the 1999 draft . In the NHL , Luc Robitaille , drafted 171st in the 1984 NHL Entry Draft , would eventually retire as the highest - scoring left winger in NHL history .